Feature
Building an By Hope Racine and Jess Kirby
increasingly turning to catheter-directed therapy (CDT). But is this the best course of action—especially when the patient’s long-term health is taken into account? According to Akhi Sista, MD, FSIR, existing data doesn’t provide a satisfactory answer.
W
The Pulmonary Embolism: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter- directed Therapy (PE-TRACT) trial, designed by Dr. Sista and an experienced steering committee, incorporates adaptive design,
14 IRQ | FALL 2022
hen faced with an intermediate-risk pulmonary embolism, many physicians are
simulation work and modern trial techniques to assess the efficacy and long-term impact of CDT plus anticoagulation on intermediate-risk PEs over anticoagulation alone. Dr. Sista has recently received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which will support the enrollment of up to 500 patients to partake in a multicenter randomized controlled study. Patients will be assessed at 3 months, measuring peak oxygen consumption using cardiopulmonary exercise testing, and again at 1 year, using the New York Heart Association dyspnea class. The
NIH-funded trial: Inside the origin and design of PE-TRACT
resulting data will not only examine the impact of CDT but also provide deeper insight into the biology of PEs.
Informing the PE community “The first end goal is to give Level 1 data to the PE community to help them make decisions when they’re confronted with an acute PE patient who’s presenting with an immediate-risk PE,” said Dr. Sista.
The success of the PE response team (PERT) model has shown that the treatment of PE is a multidisciplinary effort that requires collaboration across specialties. As a result, Dr. Sista describes PE-TRACT as a PE community study, rather than an IR study. “There are many people keen to have this question addressed,” he said, citing pulmonologists, cardiologists, hematologists, vascular medicine physicians, hospitalists and emergency physicians, in addition to IRs and vascular surgeons. As with the PERT model, Dr. Sista hopes the PE-TRACT approach may be broadly applied to other interventions in which multiple disciplines need to collect data on established therapies.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
