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Angioplasty is a way of opening a narrowed or closed blood vessel without having to do major surgery. Instead, a catheter with a tiny balloon at its tip is inserted into the vessel—usually one of the coronary arteries supplying the heart wall or a major artery bringing blood to an arm or leg. After advancing the catheter until its tip is at the site of blockage, the balloon is inflated and then deflated and removed.
The narrowing or blockage most often is caused by arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, when fatty plaques form on the inner wall of the artery and become larger, gradually cutting down on free blood flow. Expanding the balloon stretches the arterial wall and disrupts the fatty plaques, helping to restore blood flow.
Between 70 percent and 90 percent of angioplasty procedures use a stent, a hollow thin-walled wire mesh tube, to keep the vessel open after widening it. Otherwise, because arteriosclerosis is an ongoing disease, more plaques might form and again limit blood flow. The stent is placed onto the balloon and pressed firmly against the artery wall when inflating it. The balloon then is deflated, leaving the stent in place to act as a scaffold.
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