A Case of Thrombus Aspiration Catheter Trapped in Coronary Artery Due To Rupture of its Main Shaft and Twisting Over the Wire

Abstract

We report a novel complication that arose while treating a 54 year old man with acute inferior ST elevation segment myocardial infarction. It was decided to perform thrombus aspiration prior to balloon angioplasty. However, after aggressive maneuvers to cross the tight lesion in order to suck the distal thrombus, a novel complication was encountered. The Thrombus Aspiration Catheter (TAC) got stuck in the coronary artery. When the whole apparatus was pulled out, it was realized that the guidewire cut the main shaft of TAC and catheter got twisted over the wire. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a complication of this type.

A Rare Case of Thrombus Aspiration Device Stuck in the Stent

“…While there are various case reports on surgical retrieval of the retained hardware, 5-7 there are only a few case reports on mechanical complications with thrombus aspiration devices. Akgullu et al 8 reported a case of a thrombus aspiration catheter trapped in a coronary artery due to rupture of its main shaft and twisting over the wire while attempting to cross a tight lesion to aspirate a distal thrombus, and the whole system was percutaneously removed with pull. Taguchi et al 9 reported an inadvertent coronary endarterectomy during aspiration thrombectomy with a thrombus aspiration catheter in a patient with acute coronary syndrome.…”