Faculty Bibliography

Patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) have a significant risk of hemorrhagic complications. Predictors of major hemorrhage and its relation to mortality in PCI are not well defined. Baseline and periprocedural predictors of major hemorrhage and its impact on mortality in patients undergoing elective or urgent PCI randomly assigned to heparin plus planned glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor (GPI) versus bivalirudin plus provisional GPIs in the REPLACE-2 Trial were determined. Of 6,001 patients, 3.2% experienced a major hemorrhage. Independent baseline predictors of major hemorrhage included advanced age, female gender, impaired creatinine clearance, and anemia. Independent periprocedural predictors of major hemorrhage included treatment with heparin plus GPI, increased procedural duration, provisional use of GPI, increased time to sheath removal, length of intensive care unit stay, and use of an intra-aortic balloon pump (all p <0.05). Mortality rates were higher in patients with than without major hemorrhage at 30 days (5.1% vs 0.2%), 6 months (6.7% vs 1.0%), and 1 year (8.7% vs 1.9%; p <0.001 for all). Furthermore, major hemorrhage was an independent predictor of 1-year mortality (odds ratio 2.66, 95% confidence interval 1.44 to 4.92, p = 0.002). In conclusion, in patients undergoing elective or urgent PCI, major hemorrhage was an independent predictor of 1-year mortality. A number of baseline and periprocedural factors independently predicted major hemorrhage, including treatment with heparin plus GPI

Percutaneous intervention with balloon expandable stents has proven to be an effective measure to enhance renal blood flow and control blood pressure in subjects with severe ostial renal artery lesions. A small cohort of these subjects have an ostial bifurcation, which complicates the approach to revascularization. In these cases there is a concern of creating a total side-branch occlusion during balloon expansion. We report two cases of an ostial lesion at a renal artery bifurcation revascularized by employing a sequential dilatation double guidewire technique. Using a single 7F sheath in each case, both renal artery branches were wired, and each branch was predilated and stented in a sequential fashion. Excellent angiographic results were obtained in both cases

We report a case of a large saphenous vein graft (SVG) aneurysm masquerading as a right atrial mass on transesophageal echocardiogram. Cardiac magnetic resonance angiography reliably made a diagnosis of SVG aneurysm extrinsically compressing right atrium. This case illustrates the importance of using combined imaging modalities for the diagnosis and management of cardiac masses