The cardiovascular lab is located on Kidd 3 in one of KGH's Cardiac Imaging rooms. In this area, routine cardiac catheterization procedures are performed. This is when a catheter is placed in an artery in your hip or arm and threaded through to your heart to look at the blood supply to your heart and how your heart is functioning. The CV lab also performs balloon angioplasty or stent procedures to “open up” blocked arteries supplying blood to the heart as well as other catheterization procedures that are used for diagnostic or therapeutic reasons.
The equipment in this area includes a very large x-ray camera mounted on a c-shaped arm. The camera will move around you to provide doctors with rapid-motion images of your heart and blood vessels.
Other staff working in the cardiovascular lab include specially-trained nurses, medical radiation technologists, cardiovascular technologists, and cardiologists. The medical radiation technologists in this lab will primarily monitor the use and movement of the sophisticated x-ray equipment.
