Brachytherapy: here today, gone tomorrow?

B y the late 1990s intracoronary brachytherapy had become the gold standard therapy for the treatment of in-stent restenosis (ISR) in bare metal stents. Despite this, the ‘‘uptake’’ of this treatment by the interventional community worldwide, and certainly in the UK, was low. In 2005, drug eluting stents (DES) have entered the interventional armamentarium. The potential for DES to lower the primary incidence of ISR dramatically, and their potential use to treat ISR, challenges the very existence of intracoronary brachytherapy.