Magnetic navigation system used successfully to cross a crushed stent in a bifurcation that failed with conventional wires.

Bifurcation lesions can be technically demanding to manage, and even in the era of drug eluting stents, their procedural success is variable. The use of the crush technique followed by "kissing" balloon postdilatation has been shown to improve the overall outcome. However, crossing the crushed stent is essential to allow performance of a final dilatation with "kissing" balloons and is regarded as the main Achilles' heel of this technique. In this report, we describe the first reported, planned procedure to use a magnetic navigation system to steer a wire through the crushed stent to use "kissing" balloons that had previously failed with conventional wires. (c) 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.