Reperfusion Therapy

Reperfusion therapy is a medical treatment to restore blood flow through or around blocked arteries, typically after a heart attack. It encompasses both pharmaceutical approaches, such as thrombolytic and fibrinolytic drugs given through thrombolysis, and surgical approaches ranging from minimally invasive percutaneous coronary intervention using balloon catheters or stents to more invasive bypass surgery that grafts arteries around a blockage. It becomes necessary when a heart attack presents with ECG evidence of ST elevation or bundle branch block, while thrombolytics are avoided when there is no ST elevation or in unstable angina because they offer no clear benefit in those cases; about a quarter of ST-elevation heart attacks can be aborted if treated within an hour of symptom onset.