January 2006
|Volume 18 Issue 1
Non-penetrating thoracic trauma has been associated with multiple structural and electrical cardiac injuries and complications with a mortality rate of up to 15%.1 The mechanisms for non-penetrating cardiac injury include: direct trauma, rapid decele…
Percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) are uncommon causes of coronary artery aneurysms (CAA). The incidence of CAA after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) ranges from 3.9–5%,1,2,5–7 and after directional coronary atherectomy f…
Wolfgang Ritter: We know that all devices have problems; for example, the VanGuard or the AneuRx® (Medtonic, Inc., Sunnyvale, California) can incur some disintegration 4 to 5 years postimplantation. With the Zenith device, the problem of late occlusi…
Philip Reid (Eli Lilly & Company): Speaking as a cardiologist, not as a neurologist, I find that the challenge with the trial that Renato has just described is to demonstrate the efficacy of abciximab in acute nonhemorrhagic stroke patients. We m…
Dear Readers,
This issue of the Journal of Invasive Cardiology commences our 18th year of publication. There has been incredible growth in the field of invasive cardiology during 2005. Many of these growth areas have challenged the boundaries of tra…
Case Report. A 57-year-old woman underwent orthotopic cardiac transplant in 1997 secondary to nonischemic cardiomyopathy. Her symptoms of heart failure started in 1993 after a week of flu-like illness. A year later, she was diagnosed with congestive…
Aneurysms of the ascending aorta are not uncommon in the catheterization laboratory. When encountered, they lead to problems catheterizing the left coronary artery in particular. We typically use catheters with a large bend in these cases (Amplatz Le…
Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is the best reperfusion strategy in patients with ST-elevation acute myocardial infarction (AMI).1 This is mainly because it achieves a very high rate of successful recanalization of the infarct vessel…
Drug-eluting stents (DES) significantly decrease the need for a new target vessel revascularization (TVR) after coronary intervention,1–4 but its widespread use is still limited by cost issues.5,6 DES are currently used in more than 70% of percutaneo…
Nearly two years after the widespread introduction of drug-eluting stents (DES) on the U.S. market, it is perhaps time to step back and evaluate the impact of this revolutionary technology on the practice of cardiology. Financial modeling has suggest…