Cardiac Catheterization

As the management of congenital heart disease evolves, the use of cardiac catheterization, both as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool, has significantly increased. Increasingly complex interventions are being performed on younger and sicker children. Therefore, anesthesia providers in the cardiac catheterization laboratory must have a good understanding of each patient's underlying cardiac physiology, the implications of the anesthetic technique on this physiology, as well as the inherent risks and potential complications of the procedure to be performed.