New Procedure Brings Change of Heart

The University of Illinois at Chicago has been, is right now, and will always be the leader in medical research and advancements. Dr. Mladen Vidovich and Dr. Adhir Shroff, cardiologists at the University of Illinois and Jesse Brown VA medical centers, along with the help of Bernadette Speiser, the cardiology nurse manager at the JBVA, are among the first in Chicago to offer a new approach to heart angiograms and clearing blocked arteries. In the new procedure, a catheter is inserted through the small radial artery in the wrist instead of the larger femoral artery in the groin. This procedure is said to be beneficial because it is less painful and allows the patient a quicker recovery time. Patients can sit up quicker and eat after the procedure when performed through the wrist. Patients who have the procedure done through the larger femoral artery in the groin cannot sit up for hours and endure discomfort for prolonged periods of time after the procedure. When doctors use the femoral artery, the risk of bleeding is higher than when performing this procedure through the radial artery. This fact has been known for many years. "It's a simple change that has a dramatic impact on the experience and recovery of the patient," said Dr. Shroff.

Another notable advantage for the new procedure is the financial aspect. It is speculated that it costs significantly less to do the procedure through the wrist in comparison with the costs of performing it through the femoral artery. Curious about the news, I got in contact with Dr. Vidovich and asked him why it is more cost-efficient to perform the procedure through the wrist. He made it clear that while there is no definite cost-comparison set up between doing the procedure through the femoral artery and the wrist, there is less money spent when performing through the wrist because there is less blood loss and complications because special closure devices are usually needed for the conventional way of doing the procedure (through the femoral artery). This new approach was started in the early 1990's in Canada and is widely utilized in places such as Europe, where 60 percent of procedures are done this way. In the U.S., however, 2 percent of the same coronary procedures are performed through the wrist.

With the amount of criticism that American healthcare has been incurring and the skepticism that citizens express towards health care, I couldn't help but wonder why this procedure wasn't more widely used in the United States. I asked Dr. Vidovich why the U.S. is not as open to using the procedure as other places. He answered by saying that there are many different reasons. He told me that the U.S. probably is not fully accommodated to transradial cardiac catheterization because of the lack of training available.

Training not only requires money, but knowledgeable medical staff that have had experience performing the procedure; As more and more physicians are trained, the number of physicians able to perform the procedure will compound and increase exponentially. "UIC and Jesse Brown VA Medical Center have developed a training program for other physicians and nurses to teach the new procedure. We had our first course in December and our next course is at the end of this month", said Dr. Schroff. "The U.S. is generally the forefront of technology and these types of advancements", said Dr. Vidovich. The obstacles that physicians across the nation will have to go through to start performing the new procedure will be well worth the effort because this is a procedure that is yet another big step for medicine; it saves pain and money.