For years researchers have experimented with stem cells in attempts to regrow myocardium in patients who suffer permanent tissue damage from myocardial infarction. A handful of companies are pushing forward with clinical trials of their technologies in an effort to show this futuristic concept has promise.

Only a few years ago, separate software systems without a common interface were the industry standard to manage electrocardiograms (ECGs), hemodynamic monitoring systems in the cath lab, picture archiving and communications systems (PACS), electrophysiology, cardiac ultrasound and other areas of cardiac specialty.

According to the American College of Cardiology (ACC), each year nearly 400,000 patients are admitted to U.S. hospitals with ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). National ACC/American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines state that hospitals treating STEMI patients with emergency percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) should reliably achieve a door-to-balloon time (D2B) of 90 minutes or less, and studies have demonstrated strong associations between time to primary PCI and in-hospital mortality risk.

When a lab is transitioning from transfemoral to transradial cardiac catheterizations, the process can be either encouraging or discouraging to all staff involved. To ease the transition, it might be useful to employ previously implemented ideas, techniques and equipment selections that have had positive outcomes. This article will discuss patient preparation, equipment selection and address common inventory concerns that occur when developing a transradial catheterization program. The ideas and initiatives discussed in this article are those that we undertook at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago and may not reflect other cath labs’ setup. However, most of the concepts are applicable to all catheterization labs.