Efficacy and safety of outpatient cardiac catheterization

Outpatient cardiac catheterization has become the standard in our laboratory. The only exclusion for outpatient study is current hospitalization for cardiac symptoms. Thus, any patient well enough to be at home is studied on an outpatient basis. We reviewed our experience on 4,094 diagnostic studies of which 3,537 (86%) were done on a same-day basis. The complication rates were generally lower than in published series with a mortality of 0.05%. There were no admissions for late bleeding. Ninety-seven percent of the procedures were done by the percutaneous technique utilizing 7-French catheters. Patients were heparinized, and protamine was not used. The low complication rate is to a large extent due to meticulous postoperative care by critical care nurses in an outpatient observation unit contiguous to the laboratory. Outpatient cardiac catheterization is a safe, cost-saving approach applicable to a large majority of cardiac patients.