The possibility of increasing reduced blood flow in atherosclerotic coronary obstruction by catheter balloon dilatation offers a nonsurgical approach to relieve clinical coronary stenosis. To assess the ability of effectively dilating such diseased vessels by transluminal angioplasty, we used the Grüntzig balloon-tipped catheter in 12 fresh human cadaver hearts in which the intervention was per...

Despite the increasing use of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty and intracoronary stent placement for the treatment of obstructive coronary artery disease, a large subset of coronary lesions cannot be adequately treated with balloon angioplasty and/or intracoronary stenting alone. Such lesions are often heavily calcified or fibrotic and undilatable with the present balloon technolo...

A puzzling feature of many medical innovations is that they simultaneously appear to reduce unit costs and increase total costs. We consider this phenomenon by examining the diffusion of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA)--a treatment for coronary artery disease--over the past two decades. We find that growth in the use of PTCA led to higher total costs despite its lower unit...

BACKGROUND Thrombosis following stenosis of arteriovenous fistulae resulting in the loss of vascular access for hemodialysis is an important complication in patients with chronic renal failure. Percutaneous transluminal angioplasty is being used more frequently in the treatment of stenosis aiming at increasing the patency of arteriovenous fistulae. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the primary patency of...