When a patient has symptoms of chest pain or breathlessness caused by a significant obstruction within a coronary artery, a coronary stent may be required.
This is delivered under local anaesthetic to the coronary arteries under X-ray guidance and you would be awake and comfortable throughout the procedure.
The risk of such a procedure is low, at 1% for most cases and requires only an overnight stay.
Specialist coronary stenting procedures are available via Exeter Heart. These include rotablation stenting (a diamond tipped drill which spins at 180,000 revolutions a minute to debulk calcified arteries in preparation for stenting), chronic total occlusion stenting and radial artery procedures.