Background

The restenosis rate after infrapopliteal balloon angioplasty (BA) may be as high as 70% at 3 to 6 months. However, the efficacy of BA alone compared with BA with provisional stenting for the reduction of restenosis with critical limb ischemia (CLI) has not been adequately investigated yet. We compared 12-month clinical outcomes between two different strategies in CLI patients undergoing infrapopliteal intervention.

Methods

A total 180 consecutive patients who underwent infrapopliteal BA for CLI from August 2004 to November 2012 were enrolled for this study. We compared the clinical outcomes of CLI patients who underwent infrapopliteal BA alone to those who underwent infrapopliteal BA with provisional stenting at 12-months.

Results

The baseline clinical and procedural characteristics are well balanced between the two groups except claudication, which was higher in the provisional stenting group (Table 1). At 12 months, there was no difference in the incidence of mortality, target lesion revascularization (TLR), target extremity revascularization (TER) and limb salvage rate in both groups (Table 2).

Conclusion

Infrapopliteal BA alone was not inferior to infrapopliteal BA with provisional stenting in reducing clinical events in this small number of patients with CLI in Korean populations at 12-month clinical follow-up. Nevertheless, there are still no definite data and randomized trial with larger study population will be needed to make the final conclusion.

Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc.