OBJECTIVES We hypothesized that percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty performed on coronary stenoses that have demonstrated rapid angiographic progression would be associated with a high risk of restenosis. BACKGROUND High rates of restenosis have been documented after percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty of unstable lesions and of lesions that recur rapidly after a success...

A significant proportion of patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction have persistent impairment of microvascular blood flow despite successful reperfusion of epicardial vessels. Microvascular dysfunction has been associated with larger infarct size, increased predisposition to ventricular arrhythmias, heart failure, cardiogenic shock, recurrent myocardial infarction, and death. It remai...

introduction: percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (ptca) is an effective method for revascularizing of stenotic coronary vessels. lack of response to this treatment, either in symptomatic or asymptomatic patients, is usually due to incomplete revascularization, restenosis, and/or irreversibility of myocardial perfusion. introduction of a noninvasive method with high predictive value ...

Recently, percutaneous coronary intervention has been the treatment of choice in most acute myocardial infarction cases. Although the results of percutaneous coronary interventions have ben good, the no-reflow phenomenon and distal embolization of intracoronary thrombus are still major problems even after successful interventions. In this article, we will briefly review the deleterious effects ...

conclusions the authors describe the second reported case of eptifibatide-induced severe thrombocytopenia associated with cardiac surgery. in this case, discontinuation of eptifibatide and transfusion of apheresis platelets increased the platelet count (137 k/ul) the following day, and the patient subsequently underwent successful coronary artery surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass. introducti...

The treatment of patients with coronary artery disease continues to evolve; all three strategies - medical therapy, surgical revascularization, and percutaneous coronary intervention - have changed. Medical therapy with intense risk-factor modification and treatment with a statin, aspirin, and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, should be used unless contraindicated. Surgical therap...

Coronary air embolism remains a serious complication of cardiac catheterization despite careful prevention. The complications of coronary air embolism range from clinically insignificant events to acute coronary syndrome, cardiogenic shock, and death. We report here a case of multiple air emboli in both left coronary arteries, complicated by cardiogenic shock and ventricular fibrillation in a 4...

We report the case of a 78-year-old woman with saphenous vein graft (SVG) disease and chronic total occlusion (CTO) in three native coronary arteries [left anterior descending artery (LAD), left circumflex artery, and the right coronary artery], who was successfully treated by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) using the retrograde approach via the critically degenerated SVGs. The patient...

Background: After percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), excessive calcification might cause negative outcomes. We assessed how the calcium score (CCS), determined by multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT), affected short and medium-term outcomes after PCI.