EDITORIALS
Clot removal in AMI—worth the hassle?
1 E & N Hertfordshire NHS Trust and Imperial College, London
2 St Mary’s Hospital, London and Imperial College, London
Correspondence to:
Dr D Gorog, E & N Hertfordshire NHS Trust, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL7 4HQ, UK; d.gorog@imperial.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) is increasingly seen as the treatment of choice in acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Compared with thrombolysis, with PPCI recanalisation of the vessel is almost guaranteed, and, with elimination of the culprit epicardial stenosis, the risk of reocclusion is greatly reduced. There is, however, one advantage to thrombolysis: if it successfully restores epicardial flow, it can penetrate distal to the lesion and lyse further small microthrombi in the downstream myocardial bed. The effects of thrombus embolisation continue to be a problem in patients undergoing PPCI, in whom angiographic evidence of embolisation occurs in up to 15%,1 and are clearly related to adverse clinical and functional outcome.2 3 Once present, angiographic no-reflow, the end result of distal embolisation, is difficult to treat and disheartening for the operator.
In this issue of the journal, Reho and colleagues describe the successful use of a filter embolic protection device to retrieve
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Coronary thrombectomy by retrieval of an open emboli-protection filter device
- I Reho, C Gruner, and M Roffi
Heart 2008 94: 274.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
Clinical diagnostic tests
-
Interventional cardiology
-
Drugs: cardiovascular system
-
Acute coronary syndromes
-
Percutaneous intervention
- Relevant Article
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
