 My mom is scheduled to have a heart cath next week. Should I be scared? Okay. A heart catheterization in general is going in your arteries or veins with a cath, advancing it to your heart and either taking pictures of the arteries or checking the pressure inside your heart, which can be important to decide what medications you should be on and make some diagnosis. So it's a relatively common procedure. We do it in the hospital every day so the overall risks are low. However, there are some risks and I think if you haven't had the discussion with your doctor, you should probably sit down and talk in detail about what the risks are, even though again, it's something we do almost every day.