Cath Lab Complications — Course Text

Two halves, two audiences

The first half of this block teaches complications recognised in the laboratory, and runs as timed scenarios — the perforation, the abrupt closure, the arrhythmia. Operators know these are coming and generally handle them.

The second half is the more interesting teaching problem, because the audience changes. Delayed complications present on a ward, hours later, to a doctor who was not in the lab and does not know what was difficult about the case.

How we teach the delayed half

Cases open on the ward, not in the lab. Learners are given a post-procedure patient with a mild tachycardia and an unremarkable chart, and must decide what to look for. The lab findings are released only after they commit. It is the most consistently humbling block on the platform.

Covered

Retroperitoneal haemorrhage. Contrast nephropathy. Late tamponade. Access-site pseudoaneurysm. Subacute stent thrombosis. Cholesterol embolisation. And the patient whose only abnormality is that they do not look right, which is taught as a legitimate clinical finding because it is one.

Open to

Interventional learners, but equally ward doctors, intensivists and emergency physicians — who meet the delayed complications far more often than operators do.

PDF, lifetime access, from CardiologyBooks.com.