Intracoronary brachytherapy in the porcine model: a different animal.

Since the introduction of percutaneous coronary balloon angioplasty, restenosis has remained the most challenging problem facing interventional cardiologists. Stenting has reduced the need for clinically driven repeat revascularization, but has far from eliminated it. As early as 1989, intravascular brachytherapy was proposed as a means to ameliorate the proliferative component of restenosis after angioplasty. After promising results in early animal studies, brachytherapy was introduced as a treatment for the prevention of restenosis in clinical trials.1,2 This treatment was directed primarily at the very challenging subgroup of patients with in-stent restenosis.