Drug-eluting stents in superficial femoral artery treatment: could they be the standard of care?

Endovascular techniques have improved markedly over the past several decades. Plain old balloon angioplasty can only reach patencies around 40% after 1 year. Scaffolding stents have resulted in improved short-term results but encountered limitations for longer-term durability. With the introduction of drug-eluting technologies the process of intimal hyperplasia might be slowed, resulting in improved long-term patency results. At first, limus-eluting technologies were not able to transfer the enthusiasm from the coronaries to the infrainguinal vascular bed. However, the newer generation paclitaxel-eluting technologies perform significantly better in femoropopliteal arteries than their non-eluting or non-coated counterparts. The results of a prospective randomized trial comparing DES versus DCB is eagerly awaited. For the moment there seems, based on the meta-analysis, no difference between the two treatment modalities. Although, we need to keep in mind that DCB perform worse in long calcified lesions.