Prevention of periprocedural myocardial infarction (MI) has been the target of substantial research effort.1,2 Even routine, elective, uncomplicated percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has been demonstrated to produce embolization.3 The greater the patient acuity is, such as with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, the larger is the degree of embolization and the more apparent the ...

The transfemoral approach is the standard approach for performing chronic total occlusion procedures. However, hemorrhagic and vascular entry site complications are known to be reduced by the adoption of the transradial approach. Thus, the transradial approach is gaining interest and, facilitated by the improvement of materials and techniques, will be applied in procedures previously considered...

The hybrid algorithim approach, together with innovative new technologies, has lead to increased interest in chronic total occlusion (CTO) percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and increasing procedural success rates. Unlike non-CTO PCI, there is an increased rate of femoral access. When considering arterial access in CTO PCI, a balance is needed between anticipated procedural difficulty, pl...

BACKGROUND Bleeding is associated with poor outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Although arterial closure devices (ACDs) are widely used in clinical practice, whether they are effective in reducing bleeding complications during transfemoral PCI is uncertain. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of ACDs for the prevention of vascular access site comp...

Direct thrombin inhibitors (DTI) are emerging as alternative anticoagulants to unfractionated heparin and indirect thrombin inhibitors in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We review the pharmacological properties of these newer antithrombotic agents and evaluate the clinical data demonstrating their use in patients undergoing PCI.

INTRODUCTION Differences in after-hours capability or performance of ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) centers has the potential to impact outcomes of patients presenting outside of regular hours. METHODS Using a prospective observational study, we analyzed all 1,247 non-transfer STEMI patients treated in 15 percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) facilities in Dallas, Texas, during...

A pproximately 600 000 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) are performed annually in the United States.

The establishment of timely access to primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients holds great promise for improving quality of care and patient outcomes. As described in other sections of these conference proceedings, there are significant barriers to the establishment of the ideal system. Changes in policy will be required to overcom...