This is a picture of a patient, Nancy Vitale, who just had a blockage in her very complex, calcified and tortuous right coronary artery opened up with angioplasty and a stent. She is getting up off the cath lab table and walking to recovery, where she’ll be sitting up in a chair. For those readers familiar with angioplasty, you may be wondering why she is not lying flat on her back for four hours or more. The answer is “it’s all in the wrist”. Continue reading
Category Archives: Transradial Approach
Transradial Stent in New Jersey
Filed under Patient Experience, Transradial Approach
SRO Times 5 for Transradial Symposium at TCT2011
Transradial Symposium at TCT2011
Today I saw hard statistical evidence that the transradial approach is growing exponentially in the U.S. This photo, taken this afternoon, during the half-day transradial symposium at TCT2011 says it all. 800 cardiologists were packed into room 104 of the Moscone Center in San Francisco to hear 5 hours of presentations and discussions on the transradial approach to diagnostic angiography, angioplasty and stent placement.
As transradial pioneer Dr. Tejas Patel said to me after the session, inadvertently doing a San Francisco shout-out, “It was a Full House!”
It was more than a full house, with doctors lined up against the back and side walls and, of course, people leaving and more coming in. Most likely, well over 1,000 cardiologists attended all or part of this session. Continue reading
Filed under Meetings & Conferences, Transradial Approach
Cross-Country Training for Transradial Wrist Angioplasty
Having an coronary angiogram or heart stent placed via the wrist approach is common in Europe. India and Japan — much less so in the U.S. — even though the wrist (transradial) approach offers lower complications and higher patient comfort. Some studies have even shown that the radial approach, with its significantly lower bleeding complications, is superior in treating heart attacks (STEMI) since those patients need to be on high levels of anticoagulation meds.
So why are only 5% of U.S. procedures done via the wrist while figures in other countries run 50-80%? One reason has been training. In the U.S. cardiology fellows are trained in the femoral (leg/groin) approach, because that’s what’s practiced at their hospitals. So it’s been a self-perpetuating practice. Continue reading
Transradial Angioplasty Training in Las Vegas
This weekend Richard R. Heuser, MD, FSCAI and John E. Lassetter, MD, FSCAI of St. Luke’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona will be conducting a one-day course in transradial (wrist) angioplasty at the Wynn/Encore Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. But the games of chance will be relegated to the casinos because, as Dr. Heuser recounts in his exclusive interview with Angioplasty.Org, the wrist approach to diagnostic and interventional coronary procedures is safer for patients, more comfortable for patients and (trumpet fanfare) has the potential to reduce costs of healthcare as well.
And Dr. Richard Heuser has been performing PCIs since the beginning days of balloons and stents — so his perspective on why the transradial approach offers significant benefits is definitely of import to cardiologists across the U.S. Continue reading
Filed under Interviews, Meetings & Conferences, Transradial Approach
Stent By Wrist in Houston
“A new twist on stents” is how Channel 13 KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston, billed Christi Myers’ story today about the transradial approach to angioplasty and stenting. We’ve been writing about the growing adoption of radial access in the U.S. for four years now, so it’s great to see a TV report on this technique…because it means that patients in that locale (Houston, Texas) will be that much more aware that there is an option, a choice to be made, when having to get an angiogram, angioplasty or stent placed. (The piece profiles Dr. Colin Barker of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.) Continue reading
Filed under Media Coverage, Patient Experience, Transradial Approach
Wrist Angioplasty in Indiana
Dr. Jack Hall, Program Director at St. Vincent’s Heart Center in Indianapolis, Indiana will be heading a faculty of transradial experts on Saturday. The “Indianapolis Transradial Summit” has been organized to train and inform cardiologists, cath lab techs and hospital administrators on the benefits for both patient outcomes and comfort, as well as potential cost-savings that are afforded by the use of the wrist as the catheter-access site of choice, when peforming angioplasty, angiography and stent placement. Continue reading
Filed under Interviews, Meetings & Conferences, Transradial Approach
Transradial Wrist Angioplasty RIVALs Femoral
The European cardiologists don’t understand all the fuss in the U.S. about wrist vs. groin, radial vs. femoral. They use the wrist artery for angioplasty, stents and catheter access at least half the time (many 80-90% of the time) and they can’t understand why, in the United States, it’s only used in 5% of cases.
That may be changing as a result of an important study presented this week at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session (the 60th! — Happy Birthday ACC — in 5 years you can qualify for Medicare, assuming it still exists!)
For a comprehensive review of the study, dubbed RIVAL (RadIal Vs. FemorAL Access for Coronary Intervention Study), read my article on Angioplasty.Org, “Angioplasty and Stenting from the Wrist Safe and Effective: The RIVAL Trial“.
There was some disappointment when the RIVAL results showed that one method was not superior to the other. You see, “radialists”, as they call themselves, are very evangelical about the advantages of the wrist as the access site for diagnostic and interventional procedures. (They call those doctors who dismiss the wrist and are “addicted” to the leg, “femoral-holics”.) So the title of this new study, RIVAL, is apt. Continue reading
Filed under ACC, Clinical Trials / Studies, Innovators, Transradial Approach
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