Guidelines have been established for the management of acute ischemic stroke; however, specific recommendations for endovascular revascularization therapy are lacking. Burgeoning investigation of endovascular revascularization therapies for acute ischemic stroke, rapid device development, and a diverse training background of the providers performing the procedures underscore the need for practi...

Coronary heart disease (CHD), mainly caused by atherosclerosis, represents the single leading cause of death in industrialized countries. Besides the classical interventional therapies new applications for treatment of vascular wall pathologies are appearing on the horizon. RNA interference (RNAi) represents a novel therapeutic strategy due to sequence-specific gene-silencing through the use of...

BACKGROUND Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains a major health issue because of its increasing incidence and because of the complexity of its management. In addition to the traditional potentially curative treatments, i.e., liver transplantation and surgical resection, other new and emerging local therapies have been applied with promising results. SUMMARY Radiotherapy (RT) and interstitial...

Heart failure has become a real epidemic condition related to poor outcomes despite advances in medical therapies. Prevalence of significant mitral and/or tricuspid regurgitation is high in patients with advanced heart failure. Novel transcatheter techniques have recently emerged as a minimally invasive alternative in patients deemed high-risk for surgery or inoperable. Among them, MitraClip® s...

BACKGROUND The treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still a major health issue because of its increasing incidence and because of the complexity of its management. Transarterial embolization (TAE) and transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) are two widely used locoregional therapies in the treatment of HCC, especially for unresectable intermediate and advanced HCCs. SUMMARY The moder...

This is the second part of the series on interventional ultrasound guidelines of the Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (EFSUMB). It deals with the diagnostic interventional procedure. General points are discussed which are pertinent to all patients, followed by organ-specific imaging that will allow the correct pathway and planning for the interventional procedure. ...

PURPOSE MRI-guided thermal ablations require reliable monitoring methods to ensure complete destruction of the diseased tissue while avoiding damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. Based on the fact that thermal ablations result in substantial changes in biomechanical properties, interventional MR elastography (MRE) dedicated to the monitoring of MR-guided thermal therapies is proposed here....

CF is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the CFTR gene. The life expectancy for patients with CF remains severely shortened, with the median predicted survival for patients currently estimated at 36.5 years. For patients with a lifelimiting disease such as CF, the decision to participate in a clinical trial is often based on the desire to improve quality of life and/or incre...

Hypertension is an illness that generally requires lifelong treatment with blood pressure (BP)–lowering drugs. It is, therefore, understandable that increasing attention is being paid to interventional procedures that might provide a “cure” for hypertension and obviate the need for costly therapy that is not always without unwanted effects. Such interventional techniques are confined, for the m...