A 62-year-old man was admitted with hematemesis. He had been diagnosed to have hepatitis B-related cirrhosis 4 months earlier, and had not undergone esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) previously. He had no history of dysphagia. During intubation with an endoscope (GIF Q-150, Olympus, Japan), resistance was encountered at the upper esophageal sphincter, and a diverticulum was noted at this level. ...

Endoscopy is the first-line therapy for most post-liver transplantation anastomotic biliary strictures. Passage of a guidewire through the stricture is done under fluoroscopic guidance. Although anastomotic biliary strictures are usually short, they can be tight, fibrotic, and angulated, sometimes not allowing guidewire passage. Additional interventions (percutaneous transhepatic cholangiograph...

BACKGROUND Stone retropulsion represents a challenge for intracorporeal lithotripsy of ureteral calculi. The consequences are an increased duration and cost of surgery as well as decreased stone-free rates. The use of additional tools to prevent proximal stone migration entails further costs and risks for ureteral injuries. We present the simple technique of using a coil of the routinely used g...

A 70-year-old woman with stenosis at the bifurcation of the left anterior descending artery (LAD) and diagonal branch (Dx) underwent implantation of a Xience Alpine stent (2.5 23 mm; Abbott Vascular, Abbott Park, Illinois) in the LAD under 3-dimensional (3D) optical coherence tomography (OCT) (St. Jude Medical, St. Paul, Minnesota) guidance. 3D-OCT image reconstruction using Intage Realia softw...

A fully automatic framework is proposed to identify consistent landmarks and wire structures in a rotational X-ray scan. In our application, we localize the balloon marker pair and the guidewire in between the marker pair on each projection angle from a rotational fluoroscopic sequence. We present an effective offline balloon marker tracking algorithm that leverages learning based detectors and...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Candidemia is a rare complication in catheter-dependent hemodialysis patients. As a result, there is uncertainty about its optimal medical management. The goal of this retrospective study was to compare the clinical outcomes of catheter-related candidemia managed with two different strategies: Guidewire exchange of the infected catheter versus removal with delayed repl...

Since the percutaneous posterolateral approach in treating lumbar disc herniation was introduced in 1973, percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy (PELD) has become a routine minimally invasive spinal procedure. However, as clinical evidence accumulated, several complications of PELD have raised our concerns, including the intraoperative injury to neural, vascular structures and failure of sur...

pattern. She was in her 23rd week of pregnancy. Amagnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) was performed. Cholecystolithiasis and a common bile duct stone were observed (Fig. 1). Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) was deemed to be the treatment of choice. The patient was informed that as little radiation as possible would be used. However, as she was in her second tr...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate safety and efficacy of the CROSSER CTO Recanalization System (CROSSER). BACKGROUND The CROSSER, a novel device dedicated to recanalization of chronic total occlusions (CTO), relies on a monorail catheter delivering vibrational energy to facilitate the crossing of occluded coronary arteries. METHODS We included de novo or restenotic occlusions in native coronary arteri...

This study presents a case of successful severed femoral sheath recapture during transfemoral transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). During skin tunneling with scalpel, the discontinuity occurred. Grasping distal surgical hemostat was attempted unsuccessfully. A proximal part removed and Medtronic Sentrant introducer (14 French) then placed over existing Confida wire which permanently r...