Treating total occlusions, complex bifurcations, grossly calcified lesions or left main lesions via transradial approach is associated with significant reduction in access-site bleeding or vascular complications vs transfemoral approach. This kind of procedures have been typically excluded from studies randomizing patients to transradial vs transfemoral approach. The COLOR study used the transradial bore-guiding catheter Glidesheath…
Lower Mortality with Rechanneling vs. Medical Therapy
We had to wait for it, but we have finally seen a benefit in hard endpoints—such as mortality—derived from rechanneling. Patients with chronic total occlusion (CTO) in whom rechanneling was used as initial strategy showed higher survival rated compared with those receiving medical therapy. As initial treatment strategy, rechanneling a CTO did not show any…
Should Total Occlusion Influence on Revascularization Strategy?
Success or failure of total occlusion (TO) revascularization does not affect mortality at 10 years, and this does not depend on revascularization strategy (PCI vs surgery) or location. The long-term clinical benefit of recanalization and PCI or TO artery bypass graft remains nuclear. This is a sub-study of the SYNTAXES (Synergy Between PCI With Taxus…