Radiation Safety During Interventions of Coronary Chronic Total Occlusion

Abstract

During percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) for chronic total occlusion (CTO), prolonged procedures increase the risk of excessive radiation exposure. These situations harbor a major concern to protect patients and personnel in the cardiac interventional laboratory (CCL). Important questions regarding radiation safety for interventional cardiologists performing PCI for CTO lesions are discussed and concrete applications are suggested.

Impact of single‐plane versus Bi‐plane imaging on procedural time, fluorescence time, and contrast medium volume in retrograde chronic total occlusion percutaneous coronary intervention

“…In addition to decreasing the procedure time and improving the operators’ skill, some methods could prevent radiation related injury: keeping the patient's skin surface at a reasonable distance from the source, rotating the beam to a different angle, moving the arms out of the X‐ray field, and preventing the use of beam angles where the female breast is directly exposed to the entrance . Radiation has also induced other problems including cataracts, bone marrow dysfunction, tissue atrophy, infertility, and cancer or benign tumor . The importance of the CTO PCI approach is improvement in the visualization of an occluded artery and collateral vessels, length and diameter of the vessel in the CTO lesion, and the morphology of a CTO lesion.…”