Background: Radial artery access for coronary angiography or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) reduces the risk of death, bleeding, and vascular complications and is preferred over femoral artery access, leading to a class 1 indication by clinical practice guidelines. However, alternate upper extremity access such as distal radial and ulnar access are not mentioned in the guidelines despite randomized trials. We aimed to evaluate procedural outcomes with femoral, radial, distal radial, and ulnar access sites in patients undergoing coronary angiography or PCI.
Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and clinicaltrials.gov databases were searched for randomized clinical trials that compared at least 2 of the 4 access sites in patients undergoing PCI or angiography. Primary outcomes were major bleeding and access site hematoma. Intention-to-treat mixed treatment comparison meta-analysis was performed.
Results: From 47 randomized clinical trials that randomized 38 924 patients undergoing coronary angiography or PCI, when compared with femoral access, there was a lower risk of major bleeding with radial access (odds ratio [OR], 0.46 [95% CI, 0.35-0.59]) and lower risk of access site hematoma with radial (OR, 0.34 [95% CI, 0.24-0.48]), distal radial (OR, 0.33 [95% CI, 0.20-0.56]), and ulnar (OR, 0.50 [95% CI, 0.31-0.83]) access. However, when compared with radial access, there was higher risk of hematoma with ulnar access (OR, 1.48 [95% CI, 1.03-2.14]).
Conclusions: Data from randomized trials support guideline recommendation of class 1 for the preference of radial access over femoral access in patients undergoing coronary angiography or PCI. Moreover, distal radial and ulnar access can be considered as a default secondary access site before considering femoral access.
Registration: URL: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/; Unique identifier: 42024512365.
Background: PINNACLE FLX (Protection Against Embolism for Nonvalvular AF Patients: Investigational Device Evaluation of the WATCHMAN FLX LAA Closure Technology) demonstrated improved outcomes and low incidence of adverse events with the WATCHMAN FLX device in a controlled setting. The National Cardiovascular Disease Registry's Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion Registry was utilized to assess the safety and effectiveness of WATCHMAN FLX in contemporary clinical practice in the United States.
Methods: The WATCHMAN FLX Device Surveillance Post Approval Analysis Plan used data from the Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion registry to identify patients undergoing WATCHMAN FLX implantation between August 2020 and September 2022. The key safety end point was defined as all-cause death, ischemic stroke, systemic embolism, or device or procedure-related events requiring open cardiac surgery or major endovascular intervention between device implantation and hospital discharge. Major adverse events were reported at hospital discharge, 45 days, and 1 year.
Results: Among 97 185 patients in the Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion registry undergoing WATCHMAN FLX, successful implantation occurred in 97.5% (n=94 784) of patients. The key safety end point occurred in 0.45% of patients. At 45 days post-procedure, all-cause death occurred in 0.81% patients, ischemic stroke in 0.23%, major bleeding in 3.1%, pericardial effusion requiring intervention in 0.50%, device-related thrombus in 0.44%, and device embolism in 0.04% patients. No peri-device leak was observed in 83.1% of patients at 45 days. At 1 year, the rate of all-cause death was 8.2%, the rate of any stroke was 1.5% (ischemic stroke, 1.2%), and major bleeding occurred in 6.4% of patients.
Conclusions: In a large contemporary cohort of patients with the WATCHMAN FLX device, the rates of implant success and clinical outcomes through 1 year were comparable with the PINNACLE FLX study, demonstrating that favorable outcomes achieved in the pivotal approval study can be replicated in routine clinical practice.
Background: Cardiovascular events still occur at intermediate stenosis with fractional flow reserve (FFR) ≥0.81, underscoring the additional measure to evaluate this residual risk. A reduction in distal coronary artery pressure/aortic pressure (Pd/Pa) from baseline to hyperemia (ie, change in Pd/Pa) reflects lipidic burden within vessel walls. We hypothesized that this physiological measure might stratify the risk of future cardiac events at deferrable lesions.
Methods: Lesion- (899 intermediate lesions) and patient-based (899 deferred patients) analyses in those with FFR ≥0.81 were conducted to investigate the association between change in Pd/Pa and target lesion failure (TLF) and major adverse cardiac events at 7 years, respectively.
Results: The occurrence of TLF and major adverse cardiac events was 6.7% and 13.4%, respectively. The incidence of target lesion-related nonfatal myocardial infarction was 0.6%. Lesions with TLF had a greater change in Pd/Pa (0.11±0.03 versus 0.09±0.04; P=0.002), larger diameter stenosis (51.0±9.2% versus 46.4±12.4%; P=0.048), and smaller FFR (0.84 [0.82-0.87] versus 0.86 [0.83-0.90]; P=0.02). Change in Pd/Pa (per 0.01 increase) predicted TLF (odds ratio, 1.16 [95% CI, 1.05-1.28]; P=0.002) and major adverse cardiac event (odds ratio, 1.08 [95% CI, 1.01-1.16]; P=0.03). Lesions with change in Pd/Pa ≥0.10 had 2.94- and 1.85-fold greater likelihood of TLF (95% CI, 1.30-6.69; P=0.01) and major adverse cardiac event (95% CI, 1.08-3.17; P=0.03), respectively. Lesions with FFR ≤0.85 had a substantially higher likelihood of TLF when there is a change in Pd/Pa ≥0.10 (12.4% versus 2.9%; hazard ratio, 3.60 [95% CI, 1.01-12.80]; P=0.04). However, change in Pd/Pa did not affect TLF risk in lesions with FFR ≥0.86 (3.8% versus 3.7%; hazard ratio, 0.56 [95% CI, 0.06-5.62]; P=0.62).
Conclusions: Despite deferrable FFR values, lesions and patients with a change in Pd/Pa ≥0.10 had higher cardiovascular risk. Change in Pd/Pa might help stratify lesion- and patient-level risks of future cardiac events in those with FFR ≥0.81.