Safer Femoral Artery Catheterization Access Site Closure

The StarClose Safe and Extravascular (SE) utilizes a nitinol (nickel-titanium) shape-memory clip technology that when deployed, grasps the tissue on top of the artery around the access site in a purse-string fashion and closes the opening in the femoral artery rapidly and securely, with minimal affect to the lumen diameter or the blood flow inside the vessel. Vessel closure is immediate with the deployment of the clip onto the surface of an artery, allowing patients to recover and be discharged sooner than with manual compression. The StarClose SE uses similar technology to the original StarClose clip, with improved ease of use due to an intuitive, numbered system that provides visual guidance and audible ‘clicks' for each step leading to clip deployment, and added device stability for the operator during clip deployment. The StarClose and The StarClose SE are products of Abbott (Abbott Park, IL, USA).

"With a more ergonomic stabilizer and simpler, numbered-step deployment, StarClose SE offers users the ability to close an artery in a fast, safe and effective manner following a catheterization procedure,” said David Lee, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and director of cardiac catheterization and coronary intervention laboratories at the Stanford School of Medicine (CA, USA). "With its definitive mechanical closure, StarClose SE enables an operator to confirm a reliable closure immediately, which offers important benefits for physicians and patients in reducing patient time to mobility following these procedures.”

According to data reported by the American Heart Association (AHA), more than five million diagnostic and therapeutic catheterizations are performed each year in the United States. It has been estimated that complications related to the access site result in more than 75,000 surgical procedures annually. The need for an improved method of managing the arterial access site following catheterization has encouraged the development of at least eight hemostatic vascular closure devices that are currently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The chief advantage attributed to vascular sealing devices is accelerated access site hemostasis, even in the setting of anticoagulation, leading to earlier ambulation and hospital discharge following arterial catheterization.


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