Introduction Myocardial infarction (MI) caused by coronary artery disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States (see Chapter 2 ). Although the advent of coronary care units and early reperfusion therapy has decreased in-hospital mortality rates for…
The first right heart catheterization (RHC) in humans was performed in 1929 by Dr. Werner Forssmann (on himself), who ultimately shared in the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Andre Cournard and Dickinson Richards for their work in cardiac catheterization.…
Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge the previous contributions of Drs. Eugene Braunwald, Joseph Perloff, Robert O’Rourke, and James A. Shaver, which laid the foundation for this chapter. Additional content is available online at Elsevier eBooks for Practicing Clinicians Evaluation…