An in-depth review of retrospective studies to assess the role of vascular brachytherapy for the treatment of complex patients with multiple risk factors for DES-ISR.

Background: Vascular brachytherapy (VBT) used to be an effective treatment modality for management of in-stent stenosis but was superceded by drug eluting stents (DES) which had shown a greater efficacy. However, there is no clear evidence to support superior management for in-stent restenosis (ISR) which continues to be a challenge.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review of the literature and appraised PubMed, Medline, Web of science, ProQuest and Cochrane databases from 2000 to 2020.