The pandemic tsunami of COVID-19 has hit all cath lab services, especially those performing primary PCI. Passively waiting for the first patient suspected of infection only to improvise in the early hours means heading for disaster. Several scientific societies have published recommendations, but not based on clear data. It seems pertinent to bear in mind...
Check out the main topics of the upcoming SOLACI-CACI 2021 Congress. Save the Date! Special Session About the COVID-19 Pandemic Managing Cardiovascular disease and Cath Lab during the COVID-19 Pandemic Live Case Transmissions Coronary and Structural cases performed by distinguished international and national operators. Coronary Track Myocardial Infarction, Left Main session, Complex...
A thorough statistical analysis of the EXCEL has quite definitely shown that the likelihood of death, MI or stoke, including total mortality, is higher with PCI compared against CABG. The Bayesian analysis estimated a 3.3% difference in mortality, superior in the PCI arm, with 99% probability that EXCEL total mortality was indeed increased with PCI...
This prospective study analyzed patients with critical lower limb ischemia (due to complex, multiple lesions in several places) who were treated uniformly with common femoral artery endarterectomy combined with angioplasty to improve inflow and/or outflow. This hybrid treatment, which must be carried out by a team, can be greatly beneficial for this high-risk patient group...
Advancements in therapies to reduce the impact of stroke in asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis have been hard to come by over the last decade. Several points of disagreement among published randomized trials prevented their information from being integrated into daily clinical practice. However, over the past 5 years, there has been some alignment, allowing for this...
For several years we have been testing new devices that have introduce changes with respect to their predecessors in the hope they will bring clinical benefits. And so, the different generations of drug eluting stents came about (DES) even though we found ourselves stuck in the second generation, with the classical everolimus eluting stents. All...
One of the first statements in this document points out these are not “regular guidelines” developed after thorough analysis of all the available evidence published since the last update. Instead, they are meant to provide temporary basic management pointers on how to handle different scenarios of cardiac patients in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic....
This pre-specified protocol originally included 777 patients with chronic kidney failure. These patients are a special population of higher risk where we might be able to see the advantage of a more aggressive initial strategy. Death or MI rate (combined primary end point) resulted 36.4% for the invasive strategy vs. 36.7% for the initially conservative...
After 10 years of follow-up, there were no significant differences in the rates of major adverse cardiovascular or cerebrovascular events among patients with left main coronary artery disease randomized to angioplasty or surgery. Since this was the first study to randomize patients with left main coronary artery disease to angioplasty or surgery, it enrolled very few...
In the general study, an invasive strategy followed by revascularization (when necessary) vs. an initially conservative strategy with OMT resulted similar in patients with stable CAD with moderate to severe ischemia. A secondary end point of this analysis were angina symptoms and quality of life. Angina symptoms, functional activity and quality of life were assessed...