The potential need for a 7-Fr guidewire, the use of several coronary guidewires and/or a kissing balloon, and the requirement of indispensable monitoring by intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) have been used by some interventional cardiologists as excuses to resist radial access. In that sense, left main coronary artery angioplasty was the last stand of femoral access.…
Interventionists Used to the Radial Approach No Longer Associated with Worse Femoral
The transradial approach is being increasingly adopted as preferred access site, since it is more comfortable for patients, reduces vascular and bleeding complications, is cost effective and reduces mortality in high risk patients. This has created concern about the fact that operators and institutions could become unfamiliar with the transfemoral approach. The aim of…