Enhancing back-up support during difficult coronary stent delivery: Single-center case series of experience with the heartrail II catheter

BACKGROUND: Despite continued advances in creating lower-profile intracoronary balloons and stents, technical difficulties with stent deliverability are frequently encountered. Recent advances in catheter design have yielded soft ended atraumatic catheters for use within standard guide catheters - the so called double coaxial guiding catheter technique. We report our preliminary experience using the 5 Fr Terumo guide catheter (Heartrail II, Terumo) from a single center. METHODS: We describe six percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures where stent deployment initially failed during the standard approach. Subsequent utilization of this 5 Fr catheter system within a standard 6 Fr guide facilitated successful procedural outcomes. This catheter system facilitated non-traumatic deep intubation and stent delivery beyond the site of obstruction encountered during PCI of the distal right coronary and left anterior descending arteries. RESULTS: 3 males and 3 females with a mean age of 72.5 ± 5.4 years underwent PCI using the Heartrail II catheter. Patient and procedural characteristics are summarized in Table 1. The intracoronary catheter was inserted into 3 right coronary arteries, 2 left circumflex arteries and 1 left anterior descending artery. Classification of discrete lesions yielded 6 type C lesions. The mean number of stents deployed was 3.33 ± 0.80 with a mean procedure X-ray screening duration of 35.04 ± 7.79 minutes. No complications relating to ostial artery catheter-induced dissections were encountered.