Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Barry Kaplan.
Chronic total occlusions are typically difficult to recannalize especially when adverse angiographic morphologies are identified. We describe a case of chronic total occlusion crossing retrograde through the supplying collaterals followed by successful angioplasty and stenting.
BACKGROUND: Rheolytic thrombectomy has been used successfully to treat acutely occluded lower-limb vessels, dialysis grafts, intrahepatic portosystemic shunts, and diseased native coronary vessels and saphenous vein grafts. Few studies, however, have examined the efficacy of rheolytic thrombectomy in the acute myocardial infarction (AMI) setting. We sought to determine the efficacy of the AngioJet Rheolytic thrombectomy catheter (Possis Medical, Minneapolis, MN, USA) in patients presenting with AMI either before or after 12 hours of onset of symptoms. METHODS: Procedural and angiographic data on 61 consecutive patients (January 2003-December 2003) who presented with an AMI and had rheolytic thrombectomy with the AngioJet catheter performed were reviewed. Coronary flow was assessed with thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) frame counts (TFCs). Of the 61 patients studied, 40 had AngioJet performed within 12 hours and 21 had it done after 12 hours from the onset of symptoms. Procedural success was measured by TFCs measured before and after the procedure and was defined as a change in the TFC of >or=50%. Statistical significance was considered at a P value of <0.05. RESULTS: Procedural success was achieved in 75% of the patients in the early presentation group (within 12 hours) and 0% of the patients in the late presentation group (after 12 hours). TFC values were statistically different (P<0.001) in the early group, but not significant (P>0.1) in the late thrombectomy group. CONCLUSION: Rheolytic thrombectomy with the AngioJet catheter is more effective in terms of improvement in coronary blood flow as assessed by TFCs when used less than 12 hours after the onset of clinical symptoms suggestive of AMI.
BACKGROUND: Paclitaxel, a microtubule-stabilizing compound with potent antitumor activity, has been shown to inhibit smooth muscle cell proliferation and migration. The DELIVER trial was a prospective, randomized, blinded, multicenter clinical evaluation of the non-polymer-based paclitaxel-coated ACHIEVE stent compared with the stainless steel Multi-Link (ML) PENTA stent. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 1043 patients with focal de novo coronary lesions, <25 mm in length, in 2.5- to 4.0-mm vessels were randomized (ACHIEVE n=524; ML PENTA n=519). Angiographic follow-up was performed in a subset of 442 patients (ACHIEVE n=228; ML PENTA n=214). Prespecified end points were a 40% reduction in target-vessel failure at 9 months (primary clinical end point) and a 50% reduction in binary restenosis at 8 months (major secondary end point). Baseline clinical characteristics were comparable between the groups. Patients in ACHIEVE had more type C lesions and a larger reference diameter. At follow-up, stent late loss was 0.81 versus 0.98 mm (P=0.003), stent binary restenosis was 14.9% versus 20.6% (P=0.076), and target-vessel failure was 11.9% versus 14.5% (P=0.12) for ACHIEVE and ML PENTA, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The ACHIEVE paclitaxel-coated stent decreased neointimal proliferation compared with the bare-metal PENTA stent; however, this reduction was insufficient to meet the prespecified primary end point of target-vessel failure and the secondary end point of binary restenosis.
A coronary artery aneurysm is defined as coronary dilatation that exceeds the diameter of normal adjacent artery segments, or is 1.5 times the diameter of the largest coronary artery. Coronary artery aneurysms are rare with an incidence of between 1.5% to 5%. The aneurysm is caused by destruction of the vessel media, thinning of the arterial wall, increased wall stress, and progressive dilatation of a segment of the coronary artery. The most common cause is atherosclerotic coronary artery disease. These aneurysms occasionally rupture but more commonly develop thrombus and hematoma leading to the appearance of the presence of an intramyocardial mass. We present the case of a 60-year-old man with hypertension who presented with a mass that was identified initially by transthoracic echocardiography in the setting of an inferior wall myocardial infarction, which was later recognized to be a thrombosed right coronary artery aneurysm.
This report describes a case of a 31-year-old woman with mitral valve endocarditis complicated by a septic embolus to a coronary artery.