regardless of the clinical setting, a good back-up represents one of the most important conditions to ensure guide wire and balloon advancement and stent delivery. as a “mother and child” system, the guideliner catheter (vascular solutions inc., minneapolis, mn, usa) provides an extension to the guide catheter with better coaxial alignment and stability. we report two didactic cases showing the...

background: controversy persists over the potential benefits/harms of opium consumption in coronary heart disease. this study investigated the association between 12 months' major adverse cardiac events (mace) and pre-procedural opium consumption among patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (pci). methods: retrospectively, 1545 consecutive men who underwent pci between 21 st   j...

background: stenting is currently the standard of care in percutaneous coronary intervention (pci). whether young patients remain at increased risk after pci in the present stent era has not been investigated widely. we evaluated angiographic characteristics and short- and mid-term outcomes in patients younger than 40 years of age who underwent pci. methods: from april 2003 to march 2005, prosp...

conclusion: post-procedure hemoglobin dropping may be considered as a predictor of cardiac adverse outcome in patients undergoing pci. we suggest that a good bleeding control during and after the procedure can reduce the risk of cardiac enzyme elevation post-procedurally. results: all categories divided by cardiac enzyme status either in positive or in negative groups were classified in non-ane...

conclusions routine predilation of the sb in provisional stenting of true bifurcation lesions seems to be ineffective and might be associated with some undesirable consequences. still, there are some complex ostial lesions of the sb which could benefit from predilation. patients and methods sixty patients with true bifurcation lesions according to the medina classification were included in the ...

background: significant elevation of cardiac biomarkers after percutaneous coronary intervention (pci) is associated with increased mortality. however, clinical importance of lesser degrees of cardiac enzyme elevation has not been well understood. multiple factors might have an etiologic role, and the incidence of myonecrosis has not changed dramatically despite pharmacological and technologica...

Dextrocardia is a rare congenital anomaly of development characterized by a mirrorimage position of the heart. Unlike dextrocardia with situs solitus or ambiguus, the coincidence of congenital heart disease is relatively low among dextrocardic patients with situs inversus. However, patients with dextrocardia may suffer from coronary heart disease as do people with normally positioned hearts. Fe...