Brachial arterial access for PCI: an analysis of the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society database

Introduction

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has evolved from femoral arterial access predominance to radial arterial access. Despite the widespread use of the radial and femoral approaches, there remains a small but consistent subgroup of patients in whom the brachial approach is still chosen1. The study hypothesis was that, although clinical outcomes of patients undergoing PCI using brachial access might be inferior to other access sites, in procedures utilising brachial access undertaken by default radial operators clinical outcomes might be similar to procedures utilising femoral access.

Methods

Study design and participants

We analysed data from the British ...