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Christian Pristipino, Radial artery catheterization and radiological exposure, European Heart Journal, Volume 29, Issue 18, September 2008, Pages 2316–2317, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehn332
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Extract
With interest I reviewed the article recently published by Brasselet et al., 1 showing the data of a higher radiation exposure in the invasive procedures performed by radial artery catheterization (RAC), compared with femoral artery catheterization (FAC).
However, owing to a number of possible biases, I think that their results should be generalized with extreme caution.
First, the study was performed in a moderate volume institution. We recently showed that among experienced operators in RAC, those with the highest volumes of procedures achieved the lowest procedural failure rate in the ‘real world’.2 Therefore, despite their expertise in RAC, the operators in this study might not have performed a sufficient RAC volume to yield the best feasibility. This may explain the longer procedure duration and X-ray exposures reported by the authors in contrast to the aforementioned trial performed in a high volume centre.2 The consequence would be that a more frequent use of RAC could imply safer procedures for both patients and operators.
