Common femoral artery antegrade and retrograde approaches have similar access site complications.

OBJECTIVE: Ipsilateral antegrade access (AA) is an alternative access option for contralateral retrograde access (RA) in treating infrainguinal occlusive disease. Our goal was to assess whether AA is associated with higher access site complications.

METHODS: The Vascular Quality Initiative database was searched from 2010 to 2017 for all infrainguinal peripheral vascular interventions. Cases without access through the common femoral artery or those with multiple accesses were excluded. Access types were classified on the basis of whether the approach was AA or RA. Propensity matching and multivariable analyses were performed to determine the effect of AA on access site complications.

RESULTS: There were 45,816 access events identified, 6600 (14.4%) AA and 39,216 (85.6%) RA cases. Patients with AA were older (70.7 vs 69.1 years) and more frequently male (66.5% vs 59.1%), white (79.4% vs 74.6%), and on Medicare (58.4% vs 56%); they were more likely to have end-stage renal disease (12.1% vs 11%), and they were less frequently obese (29.3% vs 36.1%) and less likely to be currently smoking (25.5% vs 28.7%), to be diabetic (56% vs 59.8%), to have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (20.7% vs 21.8%), and to ambulate independently (69.8% vs 72.5%; P < .05 for all). Patients with AA were more likely to have a history of a prior percutaneous vascular intervention (9.3% vs 7%), inflow bypass (6.2% vs 1.8%), and leg bypass (12.6% vs 8.9%; P < .001 for all). The AA technique was more frequently used in the setting of tissue loss (51.8% vs 45.1%) and for tibial intervention (46.3% vs 35.3%; P < .001 for both). There were no significant differences between AA and RA in overall hematoma (3% vs 2.7%; P = .21) or hematoma requiring intervention (0.4% vs 0.4%; P = .75) rates. There was no significant difference in access site occlusion or stenosis between AA and RA (0.2% vs 0.3%; P = .68). These findings were confirmed with 2:1 matching based on preoperative data and type of intervention. Multivariable analysis demonstrated that AA is not associated with increased risk of any hematoma (odds ratio [OR], 1.15; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.98-1.35; P = .082) or hematoma requiring intervention (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.57-1.35; P = .56). Multivariable analysis of the matched data confirmed these findings between AA and RA for hematoma (OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.73-1.06; P = .17) and hematoma requiring intervention (OR, 1.17; 95% CI, 0.7-1.95; P = .55).

CONCLUSIONS: AA is safe, and it was not found to be associated with increased access site complications, such as hematoma, in the large Vascular Quality Initiative sample. This approach remains a viable alternative to traditional RA.