Abstract

Background. Catheterization laboratory cardiologists and nurses are downsizing diagnostic catheters to enable earlier patient ambulation without compromising safety. Aims. The team sought to determine the safety and cost effectiveness of ambulation 1 hour after manual compression using 4 Fr diagnostic femoral catheters. This would enable a drastic reduction in bedrest time from our current practice. Methods. A total of 768 consecutive patients were ambulated 1 hour after a mean manual compression time of 9 minutes.

When no evidence of re-bleeding on ambulation was encoun

Introduction

We present a 63-year-old male with chronic angina, ischemic cardiomyopathy with an ejection fraction of 20%. He had coronary artery bypass grafts placed in 1990 and has a bi-ventricular implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD). He presented with chest pain and a mild troponin elevation. A cardiac catheterization was performed, which revealed a 95% left main calcified stenosis with an occluded left anterior descending artery (LAD) and a patent but distally diseased left interior mammary artery (LIMA). He also had an occluded circumflex vessel, a ramus with a diffuse 80% s

When I look at the aortic pressure on the monitor during a case, I notice the little line running across the middle. They tell me that is a mean arterial pressure. Why do I need to know that?

— Virginia CVT student

The mean arterial pressure (MAP) is an important tool to have available for monitoring of a patient over time. It is usually already calculated on your hemodynamic monitoring screen, but maybe you didn’t have an idea of what it was.

The MAP is simply the average blood pressure of an individual. It’s defined as the average arterial pressure during a

Last month, I visited Dr. Olivier Bertrand at Laval Hospital in Quebec City, Canada, to present a talk on coronary physiology. He and his team showed me their lab and method of performing radial artery catheterization for their 10,000 patients of 2008-2009, with 3,500 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) from the same approach. They reported no retroperitoneal hematomas, femoral pseudo aneurysms, fistula or femoral artery bleeds, occlusions or emboli. The complications from radial artery access are trivial compared to femoral, with <4% loss of radial artery pulse as the worst of it. I wa