Expanding role of coronary angioplasty: current implications, limitations, and nursing considerations.

In the mid-1960s, Dotter and Judkins first suggested that insertion of a rigid dilator into an occluded artery might reestablish blood flow. However, their envisioned extension of transluminal recanalization techniques to smaller artery stenoses, including those of the coronary arteries, which had previously required vascular surgery for correction, was not realized until many years later. In the late 1970s, Gruentzig overcame initial technical hurdles and performed the first coronary balloon angioplasty. Since then, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty has been progressively refined and now constitutes a major medical intervention in the treatment of coronary disease. This article is a review of the current indications and limitations of complex angioplasty.