Cardiac catheterization may be used to assess disease of which myocardial tissue?

• A. Myocardial disease
• B. Neurological disease
• C. Lung disease
• D. Renal disease

Answer: (A)

Cardiac catheterization is used to directly evaluate the heart’s function and tissue, especially the myocardium. By threading a catheter into the heart, clinicians can measure intracardiac pressures, assess cardiac output, and even obtain an endomyocardial biopsy to diagnose diseases of the heart muscle such as cardiomyopathy or myocarditis. These tissue-level assessments require access to the heart itself, which this procedure provides.

The other organ systems aren’t assessed primarily by this test: neurological tissue, lung tissue, and renal tissue are evaluated with different tests and imaging targeted to those organs. While catheterization can yield data about the heart that may relate to the lungs (like pulmonary pressures) or renal vasculature in some contexts, its main use here is to evaluate the myocardial tissue.