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
Wrist Angioplasty in Indiana
Filed under Interviews, Meetings & Conferences, Transradial Approach
Showdown: Dr. Mark Midei and Stents
Maryland interventional cardiologist Dr. Mark G. Midei, who has been under investigation for “implanting unnecessary stents” in heart patients, has penned a defense of his medical practice, his first comment on the subject since the charges were made. Appearing as a Commentary in tomorrow’s Baltimore Sun, Midei’s article is titled “I acted in the patients’ best interests“.
I’ve covered this particular issue previously (“Stent Accusations: The U.S. Senate Tries to Drum Up COURAGE“). In that article, Angioplasty pioneer, Dr. William O’Neill, who was hired by Midei’s lawyer to review the cases…and found nothing glaringly wrong…posed a question to me, expressing his concern over the situation: Continue reading
Filed under Media Coverage
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
RESOLUTE US: Interview with PI of Medtronic’s New Stent
I had a chance to talk with Alan C. Yeung, MD, FACC of Stanford about the RESOLUTE US study just presented at the 60th Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology (ACC). He was one of the principal investigators of this study, which was just sent to the FDA as the final component of Medtronic’s approval submission package. The company is hoping for U.S. approval in the first half of 2012. You can read the full interview on Angioplasty.Org.
Filed under ACC, Interviews, Transradial Approach
Heart Attack Stopped with a Stent
I’m working on at least six different articles about the many studies presented at the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans yesterday and today, from new stents to transradial vs. femoral access, etc. etc. etc. and suddenly all of this is swept aside by an email that arrived in my Inbox seconds ago, posting the following to the topic of Heart Attack and Stents or Angioplasty on our Patients Forum:
Filed under Heart Attack, Patients, Stent
Will a Heart Stent from the Wrist RIVAL One from the Leg?
At Angioplasty.Org, we are about to mark the fourth anniversary of our Transradial Access Center, where we have been evangelizing an approach used around the world for catheter-based diagnostic and interventional procedures: using the radial artery in the wrist for catheterizations and PCI (angioplasty and stents) instead of the femoral artery in the leg. It’s an approach that is used 50% or more of the time in other countries, but is still in the single digits (pun intended) here in the United States. You can read why the U.S. has been behind the curve in our many articles on the subject of the transradial approach.
But all this soon may be changing, if the results of an important study, being presented at this year’s American College of Cardiology meeting, support the investigators’ hypothesis: Continue reading
Filed under ACC, Clinical Trials / Studies, Interviews, Transradial Approach
Transradial Cath in Bakersfield
I’m always keeping an eye on the growing number of news stories about a “revolutionary new way to open the coronary arteries”: the transradial approach, that is, where the radial artery in the wrist is used as the entry point for catheters, angioplasty balloons and stents. This latest TV report was broadcast Friday on KGET-TV, Channel 17 in Bakersfield, California. (Late update on August 5, 2013 – Unfortunately, KGET did not archive the broadcast, but you can read more about Bakersfield’s transradial program here .)
It’s a good report because it not only interviews Dr. Tommy Lee, the interventional cardiologist who has started doing radial caths (about 100 so far) because he feels it is safer, but it has a couple patients talking about their experience. Dr. Lee states in the broadcast that he believes radial is the future of cardiac catheterization: Continue reading
Filed under Media Coverage, Transradial Approach
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