Almost 80% of all patients randomized in this study reported Canadian Cardiovascular Society class II or III angina, and almost all of them (97%) had more than 1 positive non-invasive ischemia test that matched the area of their single diseased coronary vessel. Beyond fractional flow reserve (FFR) or instantaneous wave-free ratio (iFR), the study randomized patients to...
Manual vs. Mechanical Compression after Transradial Catheterization
For patients undergoing transradial catheterization, whether puncture site compression is manual or mechanical has no significant difference as regards post procedural radial artery occlusion (RAO) rate. Hemostasis is shorter with manual compression, but it seems difficult to implement in the clinical practice. We could carry out an economical sub-analyzis of this study to find out...
EuroPCR 2018 Highlights | The Best of a Congress that Left Plenty of News
A new edition of EuroPCR has come and gone. Now is the time to make a balance and review the main presentations at one of the most important European congresses on cardiovascular interventions. Thus, we have selected the six most relevant studies presented at the event. In our opinion, you cannot afford to miss them!...
What Antiplatelet Therapy Should We Use in Patients with Stroke/TIA? Interesting Results for the POINT Trial
Courtesy of Dr. Alejandro Lakowsky, MTSAC (Full Member of the Argentine Society of Cardiology) The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) recently published an article about the POINT trial (simultaneously presented at the European Stroke Organisation Conference), a long-awaited randomized clinical trial to assess the efficacy and safety of dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) with aspirin...
EuroPCR 2018 | Ultimaster Registry: Difference in Strut Thickness
This work compared the safety and efficacy of angioplasty with thin-strut (80 µm) sirolimus-eluting stents with a cobalt chromium structure (Ultimaster) vs. thick-strut (120 µm) biolimus-eluting stents with a cobalt chromium structure (Nobori). This study compared two prospective multicenter single-arm registries: e-Ultimaster and NOBORI 2. The Ultimaster Registry included over 37,000 patients in 4 continents, while the NOBORI 2 Registry included...
EuroPCR 2018 | LeDRA: Left Distal Radial Approach for angiography and angioplasty
The left distal radial artery has been recently proposed as an alternative in selected patients with high success rate and low complications rate. This study evaluated the feasibility and safety of this puncture both for coronary angiography and angioplasty. It included 200 consecutive patients with palpable left distal radial artery punctured by three expert operators....
EuroPCR 2018 | ORBITA: The Link Between Ischemia and Symptoms Is Still Not Entirely Understood
Invasive physiology tests used in the ORBITA trial could not predict which patients would benefit from angioplasty more than placebo (sham procedure) in terms of the trial’s primary endpoint, improvement in exercise time. These data were presented at EuroPCR 2018 and published simultaneously in Circulation. Results encourage debate over the importance of ischemia reduction with angioplasty...
EuroPCR 2018 | SCAAR Registry at 10 years: FFR improves decision making in the long term
The SCAAR registry aimed at showing the differences in mortality at very long term when using functional assessment of coronary lesions (with FFR or iFR) in patients with chronic stable angina. The study compared 3460 patients assessed with FFR/iFR against 21221 patients undergoing PCI based on angiography, between January 2005 and March 2015. As...
Risk of Colonic Ischemia after Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair
This is the largest and most recent analyzis to show colonic ischemia is more frequent after open abdominal aortic aneurysm repair (2.1% a 3.6%), compared against endovascular repair (0.5% a 1%), especially in elective patients. Most cases presented within the first 7 days. The evidence is not enough to determine the cause behind the different...
Restenosis Does Not Seem as Benign as We Thought
Elective, uncomplicated repeat revascularization after stent restenosis is associated with higher mortality rates according to a new meta-analysis that will be published soon in J Am Coll Cardiol Intrv. Historically, interventional cardiologists have seen target lesion revascularization (TLR) as a procedure that “unjustly” increased combined events in clinical studies and our own databases, thus representing...