Why Radial Access Is Better.

T he introduction of the transradial approach has raised vascular access to a level of refinement unforeseen by the pioneers of cardiac catheterization, who relied on direct left ventricular puncture or transbronchial left atrial catheterization to make hemodynamic measurements in the 1950s (1). With the advent of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in the late 1970s, interventional cardiologists replaced brachial cut-downs with transfemoral access but remained troubled by an 8% rate of major bleeding or transfusion (2). In the 1990s, Campeau and Kiemeneij introduced radial access for PCI as a safer alternative to femoral approaches (3).