[Intermittent claudication--diagnosis and treatment].

Background: Intermittent claudication occurs in 5% of the population over 60 years, and may involve reduced walking distance, pain and a reduced quality of life. The mortality rate is 5% per year and the annual amputation rate 1%. This review article gives an update on diagnosis and medical, endovascular and surgical treatment of intermittent claudication.

Treatment of a hepatic artery aneurysm by endovascular stent-grafting.

Aneurysms of the visceral arteries are rare. Traditional treatment has been surgical or endovascular with coil embolization. Recently, however, reports on endovascular therapy with stent-grafts have been published.

Flow measurement before and after papaverine injection in above-knee prosthetic femoropopliteal bypass.

Objective: To investigate the value of intraoperative blood flow measurements on early and long-term patency of above-knee prosthetic femoropopliteal bypass.

Methods: Flow was measured with a transit time flowmeter before (basal flow) and after an intragraft injection of papaverine (papaverine flow) in 87 operations (86 patients) between January 1990 and December 2001. Sixty-one grafts were of polyester, and 26 were of polytetrafluoroethylene.

Local infections after above-knee prosthetic femoropopliteal bypass for intermittent claudication.

Background: The use of prosthetic grafts in the treatment of intermittent claudication is still a controversy. Prosthetic bypass for this usually benign condition may in some cases lead to a graft infection. This potentially disastrous complication is difficult to manage.

[Use of stents in abdominal aortic aneurysms].

Background: Endovascular treatment of aortic aneurysms has acquired a widespread application. We present the results of endovascular treatment of infrarenal, abdominal aortic aneurysms in our hospital from 1995 through 2002.

Material And Method: Seventy-one stent graft procedures were performed on 69 patients (64 men), mean age 72 years (range 48-96 years).

[Stenting of failing above-knee femoropopliteal percutaneous transluminal angioplasty].

Background: Percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) is increasingly used in the treatment of stenoses and short occlusions of the superficial femoral and proximal popliteal arteries. Routine treatment with arterial stents does not seem to improve the results compared to PTA without stent but the efficacy of stenting as a repair procedure of a failing PTA is not known.

Patients And Methods: In our hospital, intraluminal arterial stenting of the above knee femoropopliteal segment has been used as a repair procedure when PTA alone fails because of dissection or recoil.