Aims: Snaring has recently been reported as being effective in catching the retrograde guidewire (GW) in retrograde percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for chronic total occlusion. However, commercially available snares and previously reported homemade snares have a number of drawbacks, such as additional cost, limited size adjustability, risk of vessel injury and difficult handling. We report here a novel method to create easily an inexpensive, safe and size-adjustable snare.
Methods and results: Our newly developed homemade snare consists of a conventional 0.014" GW, a PCI balloon, and a guiding catheter (GC). In most cases, no extra cost is needed. As the snare is created by the soft wire tip, vascular injury is negligible. To adjust the size of the snare loop, the snare wire is simply pulled backwards and pushed forwards. Using this snare technique, we succeeded in the total revascularisation of a CTO in the left main trunk with a retrograde approach.
Conclusions: We report a novel method to create easily an inexpensive, safe and size-adjustable snare, and demonstrate its use in a retrograde CTO intervention. In some cases where a conventional snare is indicated, such as removal of intravascular iatrogenic foreign bodies, this novel homemade snare would be preferable because of its advantages.