See the list of winners for all contests carried out as part of the last SOLACI-CACI 2017 Congress. The names were announced on Friday, August 4th, at the Congress closing ceremony. SOLACI-CACI 2017 Congress Best Abstract Award: Dr. Gabriel Maluenda. Title: “Single Trans-Septal Access Technique for Left Atrial Intracardial Echocardiography to Guide Left Atrial Appendage Closure.” ...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. The presence of Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO) is about 30%, with an ischemic threshold between 10% and 12.5% to justify rechannelization. Using the new devices, the new guidelines and with more experience operators, these procedures are successful in 10% to 30% of cases. More often than not these patients are not treated...
Courtesy of Dr. Agustín Vecchia. In general, guidelines recommend a number of procedures a year for operators to maintain a reasonably safe level of proficiency. Even though this number is arbitrary and operators’ aptitude varies considerable, more than one publication has found an inverse correlation between procedure volume and outcomes. This study incorporated 10,496 operators...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Nowadays, chronic total occlusions (CTO) due to in-stent restenosis (ISR) represent 5%-25% of all coronary angioplasties. These lesions pose a new and true challenge, since CTOs are often associated with stent-related problems (fractures, lack of expansion, overlapping, deformation), extreme tortuosity, severe calcification, tandem lesions after CTO, and aorto-ostial lesions, with little...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Nowadays, the number of coronary angioplasties carried out on patients with chronic total occlusion (CTO) is increasing due to many studies showing that it improves ventricular function, reduces symptoms, and improves survival. However, most of these works do not include patients of over 75 years old due to their frailty and...
Neurological complications during and after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) are probably the only event whose incidence has not been reduced by new valve designs (as opposed to paravalvular leak, vascular complications, or need for pacemaker implantation). Aside from the potential seriousness of this clinical event, the risk of embolism is particularly worrisome because,...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Chronic Total Occlusions (CTO) are truly challenging and different technologies are being developed to treat them, but currently our most pressing questions about them are whether in-stent CTO present the same success rate as de novo CTO, and what their prognosis is. The present trial analyzed 899 CTO: 111(12.3%)...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava Bivalirudin has been shown to reduce bleeding in carotid stenting and maintain its efficacy. Even though carotid stenting has shown benefits, these remain unclear. With this in mind, four studies were analyzed (one randomized) including 7,784 patients undergoing carotid stenting with unfractioned heparin vs. bivalirudin. No difference was...
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Health system costs have increased significantly and there have been attempts to reduce it without compromising the quality of PCI outcomes. The benefits of the transradial approach combined with same day discharge could help reach this goal. This study included 279,987 MEDICARE PCI procedures where costs were analyzed. Cases...
The use of both internal thoracic (mammary) arteries for myocardial revascularization surgery might improve long-term outcomes, compared with the use of a single internal thoracic artery. Patients scheduled for myocardial revascularization surgery (only multivessel procedures; combined valve procedures were excluded) were randomized to receive a single internal-thoracic-artery graft (internal thoracic artery for the anterior...