Novel radiation dose reduction fluoroscopic technology facilitates chronic total occlusion percutaneous coronary interventions

AIMS: Radiation exposure and prolonged procedure time continue to limit the complexity of CTO-PCI procedures attempted. This study aimed to assess the impact of radiation dose-limiting equipment on radiation dosage and fluoroscopic time in chronic total occlusion (CTO) percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). METHODS AND RESULTS: Retrospective clinical and dosimetric data from diagnostic catheterisations (DXC) and CTO-PCI procedures performed on one of three variants of interventional fluoroscopic equipment were collected. Fluoroscopic time, air kerma, kerma area product and contrast utilisation were stratified by procedure type and compared among equipment types. To standardise comparisons among equipment configurations, an efficiency index (EI) was calculated. In total, 2,947 DXC and 276 CTO-PCI procedures were studied. For DXC, radiation dose (AK) decreased by 45% (despite modest increases in fluoroscopic time [FT]) between the reference (REF) and moderately dose-optimised (ECO) machines. A further 20% decrease in AK was observed on the highly dose-optimised machine (CLA). For CTO-PCI, AK declined by almost half (48%), despite a 76% increase in FT and higher procedural success rates (69.8% versus 83.0%) between REF and CLA. • Conclusions: Novel dose-optimised fluoroscopic equipment allows longer FT with a decrease in radiation dose to both patient and operator. This should allow operators to undertake increasingly longer and more complex procedures and reduce operators' lifetime irradiation.