Building a top cardiovascular program is not a matter of simply throwing open the doors and announcing to the world that you are providing these services. Climbing to the top or staying there requires keeping up with the latest advances in technology that improve not only patient care, but a facility as a whole. When it comes to improving patient care, education is a must-have technology. To get the most from your other technology investments, you must invest in acquiring the needed skills to make the most of that technology. There must be a continued, ongoing effort to both coordinate and ove

Abstract

Background. Vascular closure devices (VCDs) improve patient comfort and decrease time to ambulation. However, VCD studies have excluded patients with high-risk femoral artery anatomy; we examined the safety and efficacy of clip-based extravascular closure in this high-risk group. Methods. We performed a prospective registry enrolling 98 consecutive patients undergoing diagnostic coronary angiography. Inclusion criteria were femoral artery calcification, moderate femoral artery stenosis, or non-femoral arterial sheath insertion. All patients underwent immediate vessel closure

Vascular closure devices (VCDs) provide simple, painless and reliable hemostasis following endovascular procedures performed via femoral arterial access. Their use has enhanced patient comfort and satisfaction, shortened the time to ambulation and preserved valuable catheterization laboratory resources.1–3 Despite these desirable results, however, VCDs are used in only 20–25% of all catheter-based procedures performed worldwide.4–5 The reason for this gap has historically been attributed to two major issues: cost considerations and the lack of level-I data proving a clinically relevant r

Your patient has atrial fibrillation, chest pain and a positive stress test with risk factors for coronary disease, and is planning to undergo cardiac catheterization. The international normalized ratio (INR) is 2.2. When is it safe to perform coronary angiography on this individual?

It is estimated that 5% of patients undergoing coronary angiography are on long-term warfarin therapy for a variety of clinical indications. Cardiac catheterization in a patient on warfarin is thought to be associated with an increased risk of bleeding and access site complications, especially after percutaneou

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Patients without Accompanying Family or Friend

I work at a university-based teaching facility in the cath lab. Our elective cardiac cath patients are called before the procedure or receive written instructions about post-procedure care. Specifically, they are told to make sure that someone else will be able to drive them home after the procedure and that they should have someone stay with them the night after the procedure. This is because of the sed

The Society of Invasive Cardiovascular Professionals held the SICP 2008 annual meeting in Las Vegas on July 31-August 2, 2008. The conference focused on the needs of today’s cardiovascular professional. Cath lab professionals came from cardiovascular teams, electrophysiology teams, and peripheral teams; the SICP is an inclusive membership society for all these areas. David Allie, MD, FACS, FAAC, FACA, FCCP and chief of cardiothoracic and endovascular surgery at the Cardiovascular Institute of the South, Lafayette, Louisiana spoke on the “Explosion of Endovascular Therapies in Peripheral Ar

Vascular Solutions Launches EXPRO Elite™ Snare

Vascular Solutions, Inc. recently announced its U.S. launch of the EXPRO Elite Snare in partnership with Radius Medical Technologies. The EXPRO Elite Snare is a unique one-piece medical device designed for the retrieval and manipulation of objects located in the cardiovascular system, including coils, balloons, catheters and guidewires.

The EXPRO Elite Snare features a completely integrated 0.035” profile that permits delivery through 0.035” lumens of conventional catheters and a cobalt chromium helical loop design for optimal r