The idea is to relieve chest pain and perhaps prevent the need for open-heart surgery.

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Angioplasty was invented in the 1970s as a way to clear clogged arteries and relieve chest pain or treat heart attacks without opening a patients' chest.

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In addition to the drainage tubes in her chest, she required needle-drainage procedures in her abdomen every week or two to relieve the severe pressure from the litres of fluid that the cancer was producing there.

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