[Historic perspective of cardiac catheterization].

In 1929 Forssman introduced a catheter into one of his left forearm veins and advanced it up to the right atrium, opening the possibility of cardiac catheterization in man. Since 1940, right heart catheterization was systematically performed by Andre Cournard and Dickinson Williams and many other researchers who contributed in the following decade with different approaches; at the present time the retrograde access through the femoral or brachial artery is the most widely used. Angiocardiography evolved in different countries between 1929 and 1959. Selective coronary cineangiography, developed by Sones, has been one of the most important advances in this field. Cardiac catheterization has been a valuable tool in cardiovascular research and diagnosis. Moreover, it has contributed to the progress of cardiac surgery and critical care medicine. Lately, it has derived to therapeutic procedures such as coronary angioplasty and percutaneous, dilatation of stenotic heart valves and closure of some congenital shunts. "Interventional catheterization" has become one of the most frequent indications for this procedure as long as many heart diseases are correctly diagnosed by means of non invasive technique.