Why the study?
Does the 'crowbar effect' technique improve the success rate of recanalization in patients with coronary chronic total occlusions where a balloon cannot pass?
Does the 'crowbar effect' technique improve the success rate of recanalization in patients with coronary chronic total occlusions where a balloon cannot pass?
The 'crowbar effect' technique is a highly successful alternative antegrade method for opening coronary chronic total occlusions when a small balloon cannot pass after guide wire insertion.
Hypothesis-generating for antegrade CTO strategies; should not change practice without controlled trials.
BACKGROUND: Coronary chronic total occlusions (CTO) are the most challenging lesions to treat percutaneously. Thus, consistent efforts are made to develop new approaches to treat CTO. OBJECTIVE: To explore the key points of a novel ``crowbar effect'' approach to improve the success rate of recanalization of CTOs. METHODS: One hundred and fifty-seven patients with CTO were treated with PCI using the regular antegrade guide wire approach. Of them, 36 patients (22.9%) showed that while the first guide wire was inserted into the CTO lesions, a small balloon had difficulty passing through the CTO lesions. For those patients, the new crowbar effect technique was used to allow the balloon to pass through the lesions. RESULTS: The coronary CTO vessels in 35 patients (97.2%) were completely opened. Coronary perforation occurred in 5 patients (13.8%). This perforation was properly treated and did not lead to serious complications. CONCLUSION: The crowbar effect technique proved successful as an alternative antegrade method for opening CTO. The procedure of this novel method is easy to accomplish and success rates are high.
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Liu et al. (2015) studied this question.
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