Stenting - is usually performed with angioplasty. Once the angioplasty is complete, a small wire tube (stent) is inserted into the artery and left in place to hold it open. Crozer-Keystone physicians have used stents for more than a decade. While stents are usually successful in opening a patient’s artery, the artery can become narrow again if plaque builds up on the stent (restenosis). The vast majority of Crozer-Keystone patients receive stents. Today Crozer-Keystone specialists use drug-coated (drug-eluting) stents when appropriate to reduce restenosis and the likelihood of needing to re-treat the same area. In fact, approximately three quarters of Crozer-Keystone patients are able to receive drug-eluting stents.

Rotational Atherectomy - is occasionally used to open a blocked coronary artery in patients with heavily calcified plaque. Once the catheter has been guided to the narrow section of the artery, a high-speed instrument is used to cut through the plaque.

Primary Angioplasty  - Crozer-Keystone surgeons perform emergency and scheduled repairs of life-threatening conditions of the aorta. These dangerous conditions include an area of the aorta that has stretched and weakened (aneurysm) or torn.

Primary angioplasty is an emergency procedure to open blocked arteries in a heart attack patient. Crozer-Keystone offers clot-busting (thrombolytic) drugs to patients, when appropriate, but many heart specialists prefer primary angioplasty for most heart attack patients because recent studies have shown greater success.

More than 1,000 Crozer-Keystone patients have been treated with primary angioplasty within the first few hours of a life-threatening heart attack.