Should patients with challenging anatomy be offered endovascular aneurysm repair?

Objectives: Treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm is controversial in patients at high physiologic risk for open repair and high anatomic risk for endovascular repair. We compared outcome in patients at high risk because of anatomy (short or angulated neck), severe occlusive disease, or bilateral iliac aneurysms (group A) with outcome in patients at low risk (group B).

Material And Methods: Patients at high anatomic risk who underwent treatment between October 1998 and March 2002 with the Zenith endovascular graft (group A) were compared with patients at low anatomic risk enrolled in a prospective multicenter trial (group B).

Thrombus characterization with intravascular ultrasound: potential to predict successful thrombolysis.

Purpose: To define analysis methods using radiofrequency (RF) data from intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) to characterize thrombus so that the success or failure of thrombolysis can be predicted.

Methods: Experimentation was done in 2 phases: first, 40 clots created from platelet-rich (n=20) and platelet-poor (n=20) plasma were imaged with 20 and 30-MHz IVUS probes. The digitized RF signals were analyzed to determine the attenuation and slope of attenuation characteristics as a reference standard for the second part of the study.