Below knee drug eluting stents

Restenosis and occlusion after endovascular intervention of lower limb arteries remain the main problem in obtaining better results for patients with critical limb ischemia (CLI) and claudication.Improved angioplasty balloons,catheters,guide-wires,and operator skill have enabled ＞90％ of stenotic and ＞80％ of occluded arteries to be successfully cleared.However,percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) rarely results in sustained patency with most studies showing a ＜50％ patency at 12 months.1,2 Drug eluting stents (DES)were originally designed to reduce the risk of restenosis in coronary arteries.While there has been concern about acute thrombosis in the medium term follow-up,DES has clearly been shown to reduce the risk of restenosis compared with similar bare metal stents (BMS) by over 50％ at 12 months and later.4