Time-course of vascular dysfunction of brachial artery after transradial access for coronary angiography

Background: Prior studies have demonstrated endothelial and smooth muscle brachial artery dysfunction after transradial cardiac catheterization for diagnostic coronary angiography. The duration of this vascular dysfunction is unknown.

Objective: To determine the time-course of endothelial and smooth muscle cell dysfunction in the upstream brachial artery after transradial cardiac catheterization.

Methods: We studied 22 consecutive patients with suspected coronary artery disease (age 64.4 ± 7.7 years) undergoing diagnostic transradial cardiac catheterization. Using high-resolution vascular ultrasound, we measured ipsilateral brachial artery diameter changes during reactive hyperemia (endothelium-dependent dilatation) and administration of sublingual nitroglycerin (endothelium-independent dilatation). The measurements were taken at baseline (before cardiac catheterization), 6 h, 24 h, 1 week, and 1 month postprocedure. The contralateral brachial artery served as a control.

Results: Ipsilateral brachial artery diameter during endothelium-dependent dilatation decreased significantly compared with the contralateral diameters at 6 h and 24 h after transradial cardiac catheterization (3.22 vs. 4.11 and 3.29 vs. 4.11, respectively, P < 0.001). The administration of nitroglycerin did not affect this difference. At 1 week and 1 month postprocedure there was no significant difference in diameter of the ipsilateral versus the contralateral brachial artery. As expected the contralateral brachial artery showed no significant changes in diameter.

Conclusion: Our results showed that transradial cardiac catheterization causes transient vascular endothelial and smooth muscle dysfunction of the ipsilateral brachial artery, which resolves within 1 week postprocedure. These findings strongly suggest the absence of systemic vascular dysfunction after transradial catheterization both immediately postprocedure as well as 1 week postprocedure. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.