Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has been demonstrated to be superior to fibrinolytic therapy in reducing mortality in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) when it can be performed rapidly. However, many STEMI patients present to hospitals without PCI capability and often cannot undergo PCI within the guideline-recommended timelines; instead, they receive fibrinoly...

OBJECTIVES Our aim was to compare longer-term outcomes for ad hoc percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and non-ad hoc PCI. BACKGROUND Ad hoc PCIs, whereby PCI is performed immediately after cardiac catheterization, has become the most common way of performing PCI. However, no studies have compared longer-term outcomes for ad hoc and non-ad hoc PCIs. METHODS A total of 46,565 New York St...

BACKGROUND Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is more effective on average than fibrinolytic therapy in the treatment of ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction. Yet, most US hospitals are not equipped for PCI, and fibrinolytic therapy is still widely used. This study evaluated the comparative effectiveness of ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction regionalization strategie...

OBJECTIVES To study the causes of and to develop a risk score for failure of transradial approach (TRA) for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). BACKGROUND TRA-PCI failure has been reported in 5% to 10% of cases. METHODS TRA-PCI failure was categorized as primary (clinical reasons) or crossover failure. Multivariate analysis was performed to determine independent predictors of TRA-PCI ...

2610 Introduction In 2007, the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) published an Expert Consensus Document titled “The Current Status and Future Direction of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention without On-Site Surgical Backup.” This document summarized the available data on the performance of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) without on-site surgery in the Unite...

BACKGROUND The success of prehospital triage protocols for patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) will depend, in part, on how patients are geographically distributed around hospitals that perform percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Accordingly, we determined the proportion of the adult population in the United States with timely access to PCI hospitals using driving tim...

BACKGROUND Mild elevations of cardiac troponin frequently occur after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and patients with elevated post-PCI biomarkers have a worse prognosis. We used optical coherence tomography (OCT) to study the relationship between pre-PCI plaque morphology and post-PCI cardiac troponin I elevations. METHODS AND RESULTS One hundred thirty-one patients with normal p...

BACKGROUND Early reperfusion in the setting of an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is of utmost importance. However, the effects of early versus late reperfusion in this patient group undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) have so far been inconsistent in previous studies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate in a nationwide cohort the effects of delay from f...