Bilateral cardiac catheterization rate

A diagnostic cardiac catheterization is a procedure done to diagnose heart disease, including coronary artery disease, and discover the location and extent of the disease. If left undiscovered and untreated, blockage or narrowing in the coronary arteries may cause a heart attack or death.

Cardiac catheterizations are usually only done on the left side of the heart. Cardiac catheterization on the right-side has little additional benefit for most patients, unless they have conditions that make it necessary. Some of these conditions are high blood pressure, significant right-sided valve abnormalities, congenital heart disease, heart failure and heart transplantation. Some institutions, like Northwestern Memorial Hospital, see a higher acuity of patients as with the conditions highlighted above, thus increasing their rate of bilateral cardiac catheterization. There is no gold standard benchmark regarding an ideal percentage rate.

About this measure

This measure tracks the number of patients who had bilateral cardiac catheterizations out of every 100 patients who had any type of heart catheterization in the hospital. The second graph shows a trend over time for this measure.