Plain balloon angioplasty in femoropopliteal and below-the-knee arteries is currently associated with unacceptably high restenosis rates. Drug-eluting balloons are a promising novel technology for endovascular treatment of lower limb atherosclerotic disease. Among a variety of current commercially available devices, the Cotavance® Paclitaxel-coated Balloon Angioplasty Catheter is the device wit...

Despite the increasing use of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty and intracoronary stent placement for the treatment of obstructive coronary artery disease, a large subset of coronary lesions cannot be adequately treated with balloon angioplasty and/or intracoronary stenting alone. Such lesions are often heavily calcified or fibrotic and undilatable with the present balloon technolo...

BACKGROUND In-stent restenosis (ISR) remains a difficult problem in interventional cardiology. The relative efficacy and safety of available interventions is not clear. We aimed to perform a network meta-analysis using both direct evidence and indirect evidence to compare all available interventions. METHODS AND RESULTS We systematically searched electronic databases for randomized trials com...

Adventitial fibroblasts have previously been proposed to be a major constituent of the neointima following coronary balloon angioplasty. The present study utilized the bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) pulse-chase technique to track adventitial fibroblast migration early after balloon injury in swine. BrdU (30 mg/kg), a marker of proliferating cells, was given intravenously 1 or 2 days after balloon ang...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of routine stenting, compared with balloon angioplasty, in unselected patients presenting with ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). DESIGN Randomised trial. SETTING Tertiary referral centre. PARTICIPANTS All patients presenting with STEMI randomly assigned to stenting or balloon angioplasty. No exclusion criteria were applied. MAIN OUTCOME...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have indicated that balloon angioplasty is associated with local platelet activation. In addition, different contrast media have different effects on thrombus formation during angioplasty in humans. We hypothesized that coronary angioplasty in humans is associated with activation of platelets to specific platelet agonists and that this activation may be differently m...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES The use of balloon angioplasty to treat native aortic coarctation in pediatric patients is controversial. Our aims were to report our experience with this technique and to compare retrospectively the immediate and medium-term results obtained during 2 distinct time periods. SUBJECTS AND METHOD 53 patients who underwent balloon angioplasty for native coarctation wer...

Objective: To evaluate the impact of routine stenting, compared with balloon angioplasty, in unselected patients presenting with ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Design: Randomised trial. Setting: Tertiary referral centre. Participants: All patients presenting with STEMI randomly assigned to stenting or balloon angioplasty. No exclusion criteria were applied. Main outcome mea...

Despite the increasing use of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty and intracoronary stent placement for the treatment of obstructive coronary artery disease, a large subset of coronary lesions cannot be adequately treated with balloon angioplasty and/or intracoronary stenting alone. Such lesions are often heavily calcified or fibrotic and undilatable with the present balloon technolo...

Time is Important To the Editor: Dalby et al1 have produced a meta-analysis on the transfer of patients for primary angioplasty versus non-transfer thrombolysis in acute myocardial infarction. Their conclusion from a collaboration of 6 papers is that primary angioplasty is the optimal method of treatment, rather than local thrombolytic therapy, despite delays in transfer times to tertiary refer...