Nursing care on percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty: integrative literature review

Objective: to identify in the literature studies about the performance of the nursing team in care to patients subject to Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty (PTCA). Methodology: the integrative literature review was carried out in the MEDLINE and LILACS databases, through the guiding question: how is nursing care performed during Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty? The inclusion criteria were articles published in English and Portuguese between 1999 and 2009. Results: of the 20 articles found, four were selected in MEDLINE and analyzed using a data collection instrument. All of them were published in the last five years, three in European journals and one in an American, and 50% presented low level of evidence. The subjects studied were the withdrawal of the introducer, nursing care and different protocols, variants of the time spent in nursing activity according to the type of access in PTCA, and nurses’ educative actions. Conclusion: nursing has a very important role in patient care in PTCA and there is need for more and deeper studies regarding this subject.