Clinical and angiographic procedural and mid-term outcome with new versus reused balloon catheters in percutaneous coronary interventions.

Background: To reduce procedural cost, cardiac centers increasingly use resterilized balloon catheters for percutaneous coronary interventions. Data addressing the procedural and mid-term outcome in a prospective randomized trial comparing new and resterilized balloons are not available.

Methods And Results: Percutaneous coronary interventions were performed at random in 238 consecutive patients with either new or 1-3 times reused balloon catheters.