Absorb bioresorbable vascular scaffold outcomes following implantation with routine intravascular imaging guidance.

Objectives: We sought to describe the outcomes of BVS use from a single-center experience in which scaffold implantation was guided by intravascular imaging (ultrasound and/or optical coherence tomography) to identify and treat mechanical factors potentially related to BVS failure.

Background: The Absorb bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS) has been associated with an unexpectedly high incidence of thrombosis.

Methods: Between 11/2014 and 10/2016, 100 patients were treated with BVS.

Percutaneous management of left atrial appendage perforation during device closure.

A 76-year-old male patient was admitted for percutaneous left atrial appendage (LAA) closure because of chronic atrial fibrillation and a history of gastrointestinal bleeding under oral anticoagulation. The procedure was complicated by perforation of the LAA with the lobe of the closure device being placed in the pericardial space. Keeping access to the pericardial space with the delivery sheath, the LAA closure device was replaced by an atrial septal defect closure device to seal the perforation.

Pharmacological stent deployment in the left anterior descending artery: late event indicators.

Background: The efficacy of pharmacological stents in decreasing the incidence of cardiac events is not homogeneous for all lesions or patient subgroups.

Objective: 1) To evaluate the late clinical evolution of patients submitted to pharmacological stent implantation in atherosclerotic lesions of the left anterior descending artery; 2) to identify, among the clinical, angiographic and intravascular ultrasonographic characteristics, the ones predictive of cardiac event risk.

Methods: From May 2002 to August 2005, 205 patients were treated with 236 pharmacological stent implants, guided by the intravascular US (IVUS).