BACKGROUND In patients with acute myocardial infarction or unstable angina undergoing coronary angioplasty, abciximab reduces major adverse cardiac events (MACE). Clinical trials have studied intravenous administration only. Intracoronary bolus application of abciximab causes very high local drug concentrations and may be more effective. We studied whether intracoronary bolus administration of ...

BACKGROUND  Mechanical reperfusion has proven to be an unquestionably superior treatment strategy over that of thrombolytic therapy in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Excimer laser coronary angioplasty (ELCA) is a unique revascularization device that has a lytic effect on thrombus, in addition to its debulking effect on the atherosclerotic plaque beneath the thrombus. METHODS AND...

BACKGROUND Coronary bifurcation treatment poses a therapeutic challenge. The aim of this study was to analyze pooled data of two randomized clinical trials, POLBOS I and POLBOS II, to compare 1-year follow-up results and identify possible prognostic factors. METHODS In POLBOS trials dedicated bifurcation BiOSS® stents were compared with regular drug eluting stents (rDES) in patients with stab...

Background Drug eluting balloon (DEB) is a new therapeutic option for treatment of obstructive coronary lesions in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). There is limited data on the safety and efficacy of DEB in Asian patients in contemporary clinical registries. We evaluated the clinical efficacy and safety of SeQuent Please paclitaxel-eluting balloon in our cohort of South-East Asian pati...

BACKGROUND In the catheter laboratory there is a need for functional tests validating the hemodynamic significance of coronary artery stenosis. OBJECTIVES It was the objective of our study to compare the long-term cardiac event rate and the clinical symptoms in patients with reduced coronary flow velocity reserve (CFVR) and standard PTCA with patients with normal CFVR and deferred angioplasty...

BackgroundFor bifurcating coronary lesions, a provisional stent technique is recommended compared with routine 2-stent strategy. However, much of these data are from trials involving first-generation drug-eluting stents (DES) or bare-metal where the risk restenosis higher. We investigated efficacy various techniques versus for bifurcation lesions newer-generation DES.MethodsPubMed and Embase we...

Atherosclerosis is a systemic disease that diffusely, although not uniformly, affects the arterial territory. Arterial bifurcations, due to the blood flow turbulence originating there, are the site of high endothelial stress that characteristically falls victim to atherosclerosis. Although there are many definitions of what constitutes a bifurcated lesion, from the perspective of coronary inter...

Recent evidence suggests that cell-derived circulating miRNAs may serve as the biomarkers of cardiovascular diseases. However, no study has investigated the potential of circulating miRNAs as biomarker for coronary bifurcation lesion. In this study, we aimed to characterize the miRNA profiles that could distinguish coronary bifurcation lesion and identify potential miRNAs as biomarkers of coron...

Over the past three decades, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has evolved to become a cornerstone for the treatment of coronary artery disease, with outcomes that are competitive with coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. Treatment of bifurcation lesions has evolved as well, with the strategy of deployment of a conventional drug-eluting stent (DES) in the main vessel (MV) and pro...