My Toolkit in Interventional Cardiovascular Medicine

Transcatheter structural procedures are dramatically increasing in daily practice. Approaching hostile cardiac anatomy may increase the risk of device dislodgment and/or malposition. In such situations, the use of a snare catheter is pivotal to enhance device trackability.

Find out more about this technique that allows smooth and controlled navigation across the aortic arch along the inner curvature, facilitating the advancement and positioning of the delivery system, and avoiding unnecessary scraping of the aortic wall.

The idea is to simplify the clinical practice of kissing balloon inflation (KBI) by making this technique single-operator and automatically associated with simultaneous balloon deflation.

As lifetime management of aortic valve disease patients undergoing TAVI is gaining increased attention, this article sought to summarize the principal idea and possible technical implementation of commissural alignment with current generation transcatheter heart valves (THVs).

ECLS has become an important tool in the management of severe cardiogenic shock and refractory cardiac arrest, but is often complicated by bleeding ranging from nuisance to life-threatening. Therefore, deliberate management of the access site is of utmost importance.

Decreasing the profile of a previously inflated angioplasty balloon helps a lot to re-use the balloon and improve the crossing of new lesions, or even to re-dilate previously-expanded stents. Watch this step by step tutorial provided by Ángel Nájera Albarrán to find out how!

My toolkit: A problem-solving step by step tutorial provided by Christian Dworeck & Tobias Schmidt 

This toolbox provides interesting information on which expandable sheath fits which prosthesis.

The guiding catheter is necessary for guaranteeing the support and deliverability of additional devices. However, it's not always of the perfect length for several reasons, because it is not available at that moment in the cath-lab or it is not designed for the purpose you need....

Since increasing numbers of interventional procedures are performed, the incidence for a cardiologist to be faced with a PE has increased. This Toolkit displays a technique for a safe and controlled puncture of a PE/tamponade.