| | July 2021 8OPINIONIN MYPERCUTANEOUS CORONARY INTERVENTION FOR ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTIONBy Joseph Doucette, MD Director of Invasive Cardiology, Overlake Medical CenterThe field of interventional cardiology was launched over 40 years ago when Andreas Gruentzig performed the first coronary angioplasty using a primitive balloon catheter. Within a few months, he was doing live demonstration courses. Since then, an ever-expanding collaboration of clinicians, engineers and scientists have addressed the many challenges of working within the vascular system to treat coronary artery disease. The development of new devices and techniques as well as new adjunctive pharmacologic treatments continues to accelerate, making percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) progressively safer and more applicable to a wider set of clinical scenarios.The full capability of modern interventional cardiology becomes sharply focused in the treatment of heart attack or acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Immediate PCI has emerged as the best treatment for acute vessel closure, which is the underlying cause of the common type of heart attack called "ST segment elevation myocardial infarction." The benefit of PCI is very high in this patient group and is largely proportional to the rapidity with which flow is restored in the occluded artery. It has become the standard of care Joseph Doucette
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