Diagnosis and Treatment

A range of diagnostic and treatment options exist for circulatory disease, running from simple imaging through to full organ replacement. Angiogram uses a special dye combined with X-ray imaging to visualise how blood flows through the coronary arteries (or any vessel in the body), revealing blockages or abnormalities. Angioplasty is a low-risk procedure that physically widens an artery narrowed by atherosclerosis: a thin catheter carrying a deflated balloon is threaded through the blocked artery, the balloon is inflated to stretch the arterial wall open, the catheter and balloon are then withdrawn, and a small metal scaffold called a stent - sometimes a slow-releasing type that dispenses drugs to prevent re-blockage - is left behind to keep the vessel open. Bypass surgery is used when the coronary arteries themselves are blocked by plaque: a healthy blood vessel, usually taken from the leg, is grafted in to reroute blood around the blockage, restoring flow and relieving chest pain, with the patient's circulation temporarily supported by a pump oxygenator (heart-lung machine) during the operation. Heart transplantation replaces an irreparably diseased or damaged heart, usually with a healthy heart from a brain-dead organ donor, and is reserved for end-stage heart failure or severe coronary disease that has not responded to other treatments; the world's first human heart transplant was performed by Prof. Christian Barnard in South Africa in December 1967, and the first in India was performed by Dr Anangipalli Venugopal at AIIMS on 3 August 1994. Finally, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) - first used by James Elam and Peter Safar in 1956 - is the emergency life-saving procedure performed when a person's breathing or heartbeat has suddenly stopped (as in drowning, electric shock or heart attack) …