T-STENTING AND SMALL PROTRUSION (TAP) TO TREAT COMPLEX BIFURCATIONS: THREE-DIMENSIONAL EVALUATION OF THE ACUTE ANGIOGRAPHIC RESULTS

Introduction Percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) of bifurcated coronary lesions represent an evolving field of interventional cardiology and a series of techniques of stent implantation has been described to manage bifurcated lesions. Provisional T-stenting is the most commonly adopted technique when the decision of stent implantation on the side branch (SB) is taken only after achievement of suboptimal result with main vessel (MV) stenting and kissing balloon dilation. Main drawbacks of the Tstenting technique are the risk of SB ostium incomplete coverage or impairment of MV lumen due to SB stent protrusion within the MV. To try to overcome such limitations, we recently described a modification of the Tstenting technique (called T-stenting And small Protrusion, TAP stenting) aimed to fully cover the bifurcation due to intentional minimal protrusion of the SB stent into the parent vessel. As the conventional two-dimensional angiographic assessment of bifurcated lesions is associated with a series of limitations, the usage of novel tools to assess the three-dimensional (3D) aspect of bifurcated lesions may provide further insights on the evaluation of new techniques. Thus, we used a recently developed system for 3D angiographic analysis to assess the angiographic results obtained by TAP stenting in a series of patients with bifurcated lesions.