Bilateral Distal Radial Artery Access for Percutaneous Coronary Intervention for Chronic Totally Occluded Left Anterior Descending Artery

Abstract

Despite advances in new devices, equipment and expertise, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for chronic total occlusions (CTO) remains difficult and technically challenging. Arterial access is an important consideration when deciding on how to treat the lesion at hand as this has implications on catheter sizing and support as well as facilitating contralateral coronary angiography. Radial artery access has been increasingly adopted by operators with similar success rates and safety to femoral artery access. Distal radial artery access is a relatively recent concept and provides more comfort for the patient as well as for the operator. We present here a challenging case of left anterior descending artery CTO in a 63-year-old male diabetic, in which the successful PCI was achieved via bilateral distal radial access.