Study reveals good outcomes in patients treated with superficial femoral artery stent

The use of stents has improved management and outcomes of coronary artery disease, and clinical trials are attempting to prove the same will be true for superficial femoral artery disease. Randomised trials have shown favorable results for self-expanding nitinol stents compared with balloon angioplasty. A new report seeks to test this treatment in a real-world population of patients enrolled in an observational registry.

The Journal of Endovascular Therapy offers a prospective multi-centre observational study of patients with symptomatic superficial femoral artery stenosis. A total of 998 patients suffering from chronic limb ischemia were enrolled at 13 German medical centers. Twelve-month outcomes of the participants were assessed.

The median lesion length was 8 cm, but there was no restriction on the length of lesion to be treated. The authors cite this criterion as supporting the real-world aspect of the study population. Rather than including primarily high-risk patients, a general mix of patients participated in the study. However, a third of the patients had diabetes, and 43 percent were current smokers.

In all, 1,050 lesions were treated. Twelve months after surgery, target lesion revascularisation—the primary endpoint of the study—was achieved in 136, or 17 per cent, of the patients. Restenosis occurred in 24 per cent of the patients and reocclusion in 10 percent. These results indicate that stent use is safe and is delivering favourable outcomes at the one-year mark.

EH News Bureau