Comparison of different methods for achieving hemostasis after arterial sheath removal

Randomized studies are limited on whether the use of procoagulant pads improve outcomes after arterial sheath removal in interventional cardiology patients. The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of a procoagulant pad in combination with manual compression would decrease time to hemostasis compared with our institution's manual compression alone procedure after arterial sheath removal associated with a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

A convenience sample of PCI patients were randomly assigned to 3 methods for achieving hemostasis at the femoral artery site after sheath removal (manual compression alone, SyvekPatch NT plus manual compression, and D-Stat Dry plus manual compression). Outcome variables included time to hemostasis, number of pressure applications, and development of complications. Analysis of variance and χ analysis were used to test differences among the 3 groups, with P < .05 considered significant.

A total of 80 PCI patients were studied (n = 26 manual compression only; n = 26 SyvekPatch NT; n = 28 D-Stat Dry). Significant differences were found among the 3 methods for time to hemostasis (F2,77 = 4.12, P = .020), with the manual compression alone method significantly longer than either of the 2 procoagulant pad groups. Complications were rare and were not significantly different with the 3 methods.