Vascular access in cath lab: Costs and complications

Managing Radial Access Vascular Complications

A mong patients undergoing diagnostic cardiac catheterization, transradial access leads to improved quality of life after the procedure, is strongly preferred by patients, and reduces hospital costs.1 Transradial coronary angiography and angioplasty is safe, feasible, and effective, with results similar to those of the transfemoral approach.2 Although complications are infrequent, they do occur...

Vascular access blood flow monitoring reduces access morbidity and costs.

BACKGROUND Vascular access morbidity results in suboptimal patient outcomes and costs more than $8000 per patient-year at risk, representing approximately 15% of total Medicare expenditures for ESRD patients annually. In recent years, the rate of access thrombosis has improved following the advent of vascular access blood flow monitoring (VABFM) programs to identify and treat stenosis prior to ...

What procedures must any cath lab in Africa offer?

Managing Coronary Thrombus in the Cath Lab During PCI

The last two articles specifically address the question of therapeutic maneuvers for dealing with intracoronary thrombus during PCI. Either the thrombus is removed by aspiration or manual thrombectomy or embolic protection devices are deployed to prevent downstream embolization. Are there any other methods in selected cases? No one in the symposium has considered thrombolytic therapy as a metho...

Radiation exposure in different cardiac catheterization procedures in cath lab.

BACKGROUND Interventional procedures render cardiologolists and their team members to high doses of radiations. This study was conducted to assess the radiation exposure in various cardiac catheterization procedures. METHODS This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted at the catheterization laboratory of Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar from November 2008 to December 2009. Patients wer...