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Radiation Exposures Associated With Radial and Femoral Coronary Interventions

  • Coronary Artery Disease (D Feldman and V Voudris, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

The volume of cardiac diagnostic procedures involving the use of ionizing radiation has increased rapidly in recent years, and the radiation exposure experienced by patients undergoing any medical imaging procedure has recently obtained a growing attention. Transradial (TR) access is being increasingly used worldwide for diagnostic coronary angiography (CA), and percutaneous coronary interventions, since it offers several benefits as compared to transfemoral (TF) access, such as by reducing hemostasis time and vascular complications, increased patient comfort, reduced hospital stay, and lower cost. In contrast, TR CA is thought to be associated with increased radiation exposure parameters compared with the traditional TF access. Although experienced operators may almost counterbalance this shortcoming, the increase in radiation exposure associated with TR approach seems not to be present in most clinical settings.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Marc A. Silver for his helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago/Advocate Christ Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA

    Konstantinos V. Voudris MD, PhD

  2. Division of Interventional Cardiology, Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center, Athens, Greece

    Martha Habibi BS, MS & Panagiotis Karyofillis MD

  3. Division of Cardiology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Mladen I. Vidovich MD, FACC, FSCAI

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  1. Konstantinos V. Voudris MD, PhD
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  2. Martha Habibi BS, MS
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  3. Panagiotis Karyofillis MD
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  4. Mladen I. Vidovich MD, FACC, FSCAI
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Correspondence to Mladen I. Vidovich MD, FACC, FSCAI.

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Konstantinos V. Voudris, Martha Habibi, Panagiotis Karyofillis, and Mladen I. Vidovich each declare no potential conflicts of interest.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Coronary Artery Disease

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Voudris, K.V., Habibi, M., Karyofillis, P. et al. Radiation Exposures Associated With Radial and Femoral Coronary Interventions. Curr Treat Options Cardio Med 18, 73 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-016-0499-x

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