Complementary Techniques of Percutaneous Closure of Ductus Arteriosus Using Detachable Cook Coils and Amplatzer Devices.

BACKGROUND Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) is a commoncardiac malformation whose treatment locally has been surgical ligation via a lateral thoracotomy. Device closure of the ductus was first performed at the Mater hospital in 1999 in a ten year old male using a five millilitre detachable cook coil. In 2000 the Amplatzer device was introduced to close larger ducts. Subsequently these devices have been used interchangeably to close both small and large ducts. We report this single centre experience of percutaneous PDA closure in a resource-limited setting; utilising the two techniques. OBJECTIVE To describe our experience of trans-catheter closure of small and large ducts using either the detachable Cook coils or the Amplatzer occluders at the Mater Hospital Nairobi. DESIGN A descriptive retrospective cohort study. Setting: The Mater Hospital, Nairobi, Kenya. SUBJECTS Patients with clinical and echo-cardiographic features of patent ductus arteriosus who underwent cardiac catheterisation and angiography followed by device embolisation of the ductus. RESULTS From April 1999 to October 2009 a total of ninety eight subjects were recruited. into the study. Sixty nine (70%) of these subjects had the ducts closed using the Amplatzer devices, while twenty nine (30%) were embolised using the cook detachable coils. Three of the subjects in the coil group had the ducts embolised using the double technique while the rest were embolised using single coils. Various coil sizes four to eight millimetres were used in patients with small to medium ducts (two to seven millimetres) whereas the Amplatzer duct occluder was successfully used in all the duct sizes. The Amplatzer atrial septal occluder device was used to close very large ducts in two of the patients. The overall success rate was 93.1%, but the coil group had higher failure rate of 6.9% compared to the Amplatzer group of 3%. One patient in the Amplatzer group had a late embolisation requiring surgical retrieval at one month post occlusion. There were no mortalities. CONCLUSION Transcatheter device occlusion of PDA is a safe and alternative to