IDAHealth pushes measured radial artery checks before discharge

At EuroVASC 2026 in the Netherlands, 72% of attendees backed verifying radial artery patency before discharge after wrist-access heart procedures. The response underscores growing concern over silent radial artery loss and supports IDAHealth’s push for real-time guided compression monitoring.

Why it matters: - Radial access is now the default route for most heart catheterizations worldwide, so preserving the wrist artery has become a routine clinical priority. - Radial artery occlusion is often silent when it happens, but the artery may be needed later for another catheterization, bypass surgery, or dialysis access. - A clearer way to verify patency before discharge could reduce avoidable access loss and improve long-term treatment options for patients.

What happened: - On 6 June 2026, Dr. Giovanni Amoroso, Medical Director and Co-Founder of IDAHealth Inc. and Chair of its Scientific Advisory Board, gave the split lecture “Maintaining is enough?” at EuroVASC. - The talk took place in Session 4, “Minimally Invasive, Maximally Effective.” - When asked whether radial artery patency should be routinely assessed before discharge, 72% of participants agreed. - Dr. Amoroso framed the presentation around the lifetime management of radial access in NIJKERK, The Netherlands.

The details: - Patent Hemostasis means stopping bleeding while keeping the artery open after a wrist-access procedure. - Cardiology societies recommend Patent Hemostasis, but no device currently measures whether it has actually been achieved. - Dedicated compression devices solved the bleeding-control side in 2007, while patency is still commonly verified through intermittent manual checks. - Transradial access now accounts for roughly 70% of procedures globally and is expected to pass 18 million procedures within five years. - Radial artery occlusion averages 13% across 41 studies and about 30,000 patients, according to Khalid et al. 2024. - The 2026 position paper of the German Society of Cardiology places the range at 5% to 15%. - The loss is usually unnoticed at the time because the ulnar artery still supplies blood to the hand. - At today’s volume of about 14.5 million transradial procedures a year, the article puts silent radial artery loss at roughly 1.9 million arteries annually. - About half of those patients may need the artery again later. - Some return within a year for staged PCI through the same site. - Others may need the radial artery as a conduit for coronary bypass surgery or for arteriovenous fistulas in dialysis. - In the largest published prospective dataset, mean hemostasis time fell from 190 minutes to 66 minutes when Patent Hemostasis was confirmed continuously rather than checked intermittently, citing Takamatsu et al. 2023.

Between the lines: - The 72% vote suggests the field is moving from accepting radial patency as a manual, best-effort check to treating it as something that should be measured before discharge. - IDAHealth is positioning Guided Compression as a new category, not just a new device. - The company is trying to make radial compression measurable in the same way continuous glucose monitors changed routine diabetes monitoring. - The argument is as much about data generation as it is about bleeding control.

What’s next: - IDAHealth says it will replicate the hemostasis findings in its own trials. - The company’s first product, IdaFlo TR, is a single-use wristband sensor that attaches alongside existing compression bands and displays a real-time green, yellow, or red flow signal. - IdaFlo TR pairs with a reusable reader and produces a continuous record of the compression procedure. - The first European clinical pilot cohort is committed across centers in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Germany. - IDAHealth’s patent family is granted in the United States, the European Union, Japan, China, and India, with protection extending toward 2040. - The company was selected to the BDMT Global Top 40 in 2026.

The bottom line: - EuroVASC attendees signaled growing support for routine radial patency checks before discharge, reinforcing the clinical case for tools that can objectively monitor post-procedure wrist artery flow.