Coronary chronic total occlusions (CTOs) still represent the greatest technical challenge that interventional cardiologists face. CTOs remain seriously undertreated with percutaneous techniques, far below their prevalence. One reason for the low uptake was the suboptimal CTO percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) success rates over a long period of time. During the last years, dedicated group...

New therapies are incorporated into clinical practice for a variety of reasons. Usually, they are more efficacious than what is currently used for a specific disease state. Sometimes, they are just as efficacious but safer. When a new treatment strategy is able to achieve better efficacy and safety, at an equal or lower cost, it becomes a “dominant” strategy. Few therapies in cardiovascular med...

There are evidence-based guidelines for staging of patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention, but we are not aware of any evidence comparing the strategy of complete revascularization with percutaneous coronary intervention in the index admission versus the strategy of staging in a subsequent admission for patients with coronary artery diseas...

Bifurcation coronary artery disease is a frequent problem faced by interventional cardiologists and it affects approximately 15-20% of patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The application of drug-eluting stents (DES) technology to prevent restenosis after PCI represents one of the success stories in cardiology, but DES have not resolved the bifurcation PCI challenge. Bi...

IntroductionThe Six-Minute Walk Test (6MWT) has been used for over thirty years to assess exercise capacity in patients with respiratory disease, and more recently heart failure. However, despite being a simple reproducible test of real-world capacity, its use ischaemic disease (IHD) is less well accepted. We sought review systematically the evidence surrounding 6MWT IHD.MethodsWe searched Medl...

OBJECTIVES To assess the perceptions of patients with stable coronary artery disease of the urgency and benefits of elective percutaneous coronary intervention and to examine how they vary across centers and by providers. DESIGN Cross sectional study. SETTING 10 US academic and community hospitals performing percutaneous coronary interventions between 2009 and 2011. PARTICIPANTS 991 patie...

Many patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) have multivessel coronary artery disease (CAD) (1,2), yet interventional cardiologists can almost always identify a single lesion responsible for the infarction. After successful percutaneous coronary intervention of the infarct-related lesion (culprit PCI), there are 2 competing strategies available for STEMI patients with m...

Correspondence to: Dr Yves Louvard, Institut Cardiovasculaire Paris Sud, Institut Hospitalier Jacques Cartier, 6 avenue du Noyer Lambert, 91300 Massy, France; [email protected] _________________________ E ver since coronary angioplasty was first undertaken, treatment of coronary bifurcation lesions has posed technical problems. w2 Specific difficulties involving access to the side branch an...