The Advent of Transradial Interventions: An Overview

The first documented transradial procedure was performed in 1947. Dr. Radner at the University of Lund in Sweden performed an intracranial angiography after accessing the radial artery via surgical exposure. Due to the technical difficulties and lack of appropriately sized and flexible catheters, use of transradial access remained very limited. In 1989, Dr. Lucien Campeau at the Montreal Heart Institute published his series of 100 percutaneous coronary angiography using the distal radial artery. Campeau’s work inspired Dr. Kiemeneij, of the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis (OLVG) in Amsterdam, to apply the technique to percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). Dr. Kiemeneij’s and Dr. Campeau’s pioneering work eventually culminated with transradial access being widely accepted in the field of cardiology as the gold standard for access for PCI. The first transradial (TRA) noncoronary interventions were first performed in Japan in 1999. However, uptake of the transradial approach has been slow in the field of interventional radiology. Dr. Aaron Fischman, at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, NY, performed the first chemoembolization via the radial artery in the United States in 2012. With the subsequent establishment of the Annual TransRadial Endovascular Advanced Therapies (TREAT) Conference and increasing feasibility and safety data, TRA in interventional radiology is gradually transitioning from a single center endeavor to wide acceptance in multiple centers in the USA.