‘Slow to the party’
U.S. interventional cardiologists have been “slow to the party” in adopting radial artery access for PCI, said David A. Cox, MD, of Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute in Charlotte, N.C., and SCAI communications committee chair. Even now uptake is low, compared with the rest of the world, he said.
“I can tell you what patients care about: Did you have to stick my groin?” he said at a SCAI press conference. “What they just want to know is that there are no issues with hand function.”
Some patients who need fine motor hand function would still opt for femoral access, he said.
“Are we looking at the right metric?” he asked Dr. Al-Azizi. “It took a long time to get American doctors to stick the radial, so why would I want to learn distal radial artery if I’m really pretty good at proximal and if it’s not inferior?”
Dr. Al-Azizi noted that previous studies showed a trend toward a lower incidence of radial artery occlusion (RAO) with DRA access. It also better preserves the renal arteries for dialysis and CABG, he said.
“The metric that would move the needle,” Dr. Cox noted, “is if you had radial artery occlusion rates vs. snuff box occlusion rates, and we don’t have that rate.”
Dr. Al-Azizi has no relevant financial disclosures. Dr. Cox disclosed financial relationships with Medtronic.