Hybrid Catheterization lab (Cath lab) procedures

Children's Hospital of Wisconsin offers the state's only pediatric hybrid catheterization lab. This lab allows our doctors to guide a catheter through a vein into the heart to take a closer look. With our hybrid technology, catheterizations can be performed alongside surgical procedures. This allows us to provide safer, more effective care than standard cath labs.

Our pediatric cardiologists and pediatric cardiac anesthesiologists perform more than 450 cath lab procedures each year, including device closures for children's heart defects.

It is routine for us to not only diagnose heart problems, but repair them in the cath lab. Cath lab procedures may be performed to:

Measure intracardiac (in the heart chambers) blood pressures and flow.

Take pictures or angiograms of cardiac structures and vessels.

Obtain cardiac tissue samples for biopsy.

Create a hole in the heart in certain complex conditions to allow proper blood flow.

Place mesh devices that close some holes inside the heart such as:

• Patent ductus arteriosus (PDAs).
• Atrial septal defects (ASDs).
• Ventricular septal defects (VSDs).

Diagnose and correct abnormal cardiac rhythms through:

Electrophysiology studies.

Transvenous pacemakers.

Cryoablation of abnormal electrical pathways.

Place wire devices called stents in narrowed arteries to keep them open.