Echo Quiz
 

Dear Colleagues
It is a great pleasure and honor for me to present to you the third issue of the Indian Heart Journal in 2010 on Transradial Interventions. At the outset, I express my gratitude and thanks to the guest editor Keyur H. Parikh for their outstanding support and collection of materials from stalwarts all over the world to bring out this special focus issue on “Transradial Coronary intervention……”
Albert Einstein once said “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
This current issue highlights the change in scenario of coronary intervention from a transfemoral approach to the newer, easier, cheaper and an approach with fewer complications, namely the transradial approach. L. Campeau in 1989 and subsequently followed by other cardiologist around the world since then have successfully attempted diagnostic cardiac catheterization and percutaneous coronary intervention using the radial artery. Since then, the technique has evolved significantly with improvement in catheters and operators gaining experience in transradial procedures. Transradial cardiac catheterization uses the wrist, not the groin, for catheter insertion. This technique is safer, offers no scarring, a decreased risk of bleeding, lowered risk of complications, less risk of trauma to adjacent nerves and blood vessels, reduced hospital and health care costs and a shorter recovery period and enhanced patient satisfaction has made the transradial approach a preferred route to perform cardiac catheterization and percutaneous coronary interventions in an increasing number of countries. As operators become more comfortable with this approach, they are using it to perform increasingly complex procedures such as rotational atherectomy and opening chronic total occlusions. In this focus issue, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of the transradial approach trying to identify the possible causes of it not being adopted in India.
As Albert Einstein once said "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Thus besides the clinical research articles on Transradial Intervention, there are a few brief communications and interesting case reports to provide more clinical relevance in our daily practice of Cardiology.
H. K. Chopra
Honorary Editor

 

190
 
Indian Heart J. 2010;62;190