Buddy balloon to deliver a percutaneous aortic valve device: a percutaneous shoehorn?

Percutaneous aortic valve replacement is performed with increasing frequency in patients with severe aortic stenosis at prohibitive surgical risk. Currently available devices are however in their early development stage, and are thus quite bulky with a large profile, with ensuing difficulties in delivery of the device through a stenotic aortic valve. We report hereby a case in which we employed a buddy wire and balloon technique as a "shoehorn" to enable accurate delivery of a balloon-expandable aortic valve prosthesis from the transfemoral route. Copyright 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.