April 2006
|Volume 18 Issue 4
Coronary perforation is a rare but potentially life-threatening complication of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). As an increasing number of complex PCI procedures are undertaken with aggressive anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy, a hig…
The use of a second 0.014 inch coronary guidewire, along with the one being used to advance balloons or stents inside the coronary arteries during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), sometimes helps to address complex lesions — a method known a…
Recently, a number of clinical studies demonstrated that distal embolization occurs routinely during percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) — not only on saphenous vein grafts, but also on native coronary arteries.1–9 During primary PCI, embolizat…
Accelerated allograft vasculopathy in cardiac transplant recipients occurs commonly five or more years after transplantation and limits patient survival.1,2
Unlike native atherosclerosis, this peculiar vasculopathy has a diffuse pattern of coronary…
Percutaneous coronary intervention has revolutionized the management of coronary artery disease since its inception in 1977. Initial problems with acute vessel closure were largely solved with the advent of stenting.1 Recurrent stenosis and/or occlus…
Drug-eluting stents have ushered in a new era in interventional cardiology with the availability of sirolimus-eluting Cypher™ (Cordis Corp., Miami, Florida) and paclitaxel-eluting Taxus® (Boston Scientific Corp., Natick, Massachusetts) stents which h…
With aggressive anticoagulation and antiplatelet therapy being used in interventional cardiology, transradial interventions are becoming more popular due to lower bleeding complication rates.1,2 A common situation encountered in transradial catheteri…
Radial artery spasm is frequently associated with transradial coronary access. Incidence varies around 10% and is caused by many factors. Spasm rarely leads to serious complications such as eversion atherectomy,1 but is commonly associated with proce…
Dual antiplatelet therapy of aspirin and a thienopyridine has been established as the standard of care in patients undergoing coronary stent implantation.1–4 Those patients who require chronic anticoagulation for prosthetic cardiac valves, atrial fib…
Coronary stent implantation decreases restenosis rates when compared with percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA),1,2 and the use of these endoluminal scaffolds has increased dramatically since their introduction.3 The most compelling r…