Cardiac Catheterization Lab

Wheeling Hospital is the only area medical facility to provide balloon angioplasty, and its Cardiac Catheterization Lab staff can proudly say it performs the procedure in nearly one-half the time recommended by the American College of Cardiology (ACC).

The ACC, under it's "D2B: An Alliance for Quality" (www.d2balliance.org) campaign, recommends that hospitals performing balloon angioplasty reopen clogged arteries in heart attack victims within the nationally recommended 90 minutes or less. Wheeling Hospital's average for the procedure is 48 minutes. The D2B, or door-to-balloon, time study involves several departments working together to get patients having heart attacks to the cath lab as quickly as possible. It is proven that the quicker the artery causing the heart attack can be opened, the less heart damage will result.

Like other facilities, Wheeling Hospital has cardiologists who perform heart catheterizations to determine the amount of artery blockage. But locally, only Wheeling hospital has interventional cardiologists who can perform balloon angioplasty to open the blockage.

In addition, Wheeling Hospital is now the first medical facility in the Northern Panhandle to offer complete service for electrical problems of the heart, including electrophysiology (EP) studies, device implantation of pacemakers, defibrillators, heart failure devices as well as complex ablations.

Cath Lab Procedures

Routine cardiac catheterization
Right heart catheterization
Balloon angioplasty
Coronary stent insertion
Cardioversion
Electrophysiology (EP) studies / ablations
Pacemaker implant
Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD)
IVUS - intravascular ultrasound

In 2009 the lab performed 1,357 diagnostic procedures, 593 angioplasty/stent interventional cases and 313 electrophysiology cases.

Experience Counts

The Cardiac Catheterization Lab is staffed by nurses with an average of 21 years of nursing experience and radiological technologists with an average of 16 years of experience. Dr. Robert Fanning is director of the lab.