Therapeutic cardiac catheterization carries a higher risk of complications than diagnostic procedures due to the use of larger equipment and coronary manipulation, though overall major complication rates remain under 1%.
The advent of angioplasty beginning in the 1980s has made cardiac catherization a daily and important tool for treatment in cardiovascular disease, with more than 1,000,000 catheterizations performed annually in the United States. Major complication rates are less than 1%, and risk of mortality is ∼0.05% to 1%.1 When examining catheter-related complications, it is important to decipher between diagnostic and therapeutic cardiac catheterization procedures. The rate and severity of such complications are often greater in therapeutic procedures, owing to the use of larger sheaths, stiffer guidewires, and manipulation within coronary vessels.
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McDonald et al. (2021) studied this question.
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