From the Experts

Your cath lab director is on the speaker’s bureau for a pharmaceutical company that promotes antiplatelet agents. Does this mean you cannot buy this drug to use in the cath lab? Does this mean the doctor cannot perform a procedure with this...

Last fall, I visited Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and was shown their marvelous hybrid cath lab/OR. An interventional procedure was underway, to be shortly followed by a left internal mammary artery (LIMA)...

In this issue of Cath Lab Digest, Dr. William Fearon from Stanford University talks about the FAME (Fractional flow reserve vs. Angiography in Multivessel Evaluation) study1 and how using fractional flow reserve (FFR) with a pressure wire was...

What does “platelet resistance” mean? A better term to use would be clopidogrel non-responsiveness, or, even more specifically, high platelet reactivity while on clopidogrel (Plavix) therapy. Clopidogrel exerts its anti-platelet effect by...

In recent years, studies of multivessel coronary angioplasty randomized patients between surgery and intervention. The fairness of this randomization assignment has become a subject of great interest, since it may influence outcomes. One of...

The role nitric oxide plays in the regulation of pressures in the pulmonary artery is a relatively new discovery. This article will examine the history of nitric oxide as a vasodilator, the new classifications of pulmonary hypertension and...

A 68-year-old man was admitted for acute ST-elevation inferior myocardial infarction after right coronary artery stenting (3.0 x 18mm drug-eluting stent) four months ago. He had been taking 81 mg of aspirin and 75 mg of clopidogrel orally on...

This Editor’s Corner is directed at those practicing in labs with biplane angiographic capabilities. For those without biplane imaging, this discussion might be helpful for your next lab. “Two heads are better than one,” the adage goes, and...