Babar Basir: Best Practices in Revascularization in Cardiogenic Shock

“I think fundamentally people have to realize that doing a supported case, or doing revascularization in a supported fashion, makes things a lot smoother and a lot easier,” Babar Basir, D.O., states in this discussion of revascularization in patients with cardiogenic shock. “You unload the ventricle. You improve your hemodynamics.”

Dr. Basir explains that bad outcomes often occur after interventional cardiologists open the infact-related artery and the patient experiences reperfusion injury, which may be associated with arrhythmias and dramatic changes in hemodynamics. Many patients, he emphasizes, who are already in cardiogenic shock and already have poor hemodynamics, can’t survive that secondary insult. “And so having them supported ahead of time, being able to treat them in a controlled environment, goes a really long way.”

Dr. Basir concludes by explaining that door-to-support time was one of the variables identified in the National Cardiogenic Shock Initiative (NCSI) study as independently predictive of outcome and patient survival.