Procedural Outcomes With Femoral, Radial, Distal Radial, and Ulnar Access for Coronary Angiography: A Network Meta-Analysis

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.