Feasibility of Implanting 50–60 mm-Tapered Drug Eluting Stents in Chronic Total Occlusions
Highlights
- • CTO PCI usually involves multiple overlapping stents implantation, which is associated with higher risk of adverse events.
- • This is the first report describing the use of very long tapered stents (50 and 60 mm-long) for the percutaneous revascularization of CTO.
- • We successfully deployed a long coronary stent in 94.4% of the patients in which it was attempted.
- • In almost sixty percent of the cases, a single stent was implanted, avoiding the need for stents overlapping.
- • Our results support the feasibility of the use of these very long coronary stents in CTO PCI.
Abstract
Background
Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) of chronic total occlusions (CTO) usually involves multiple overlapping stents implantation to cover long coronary segments. A higher rate of restenosis has been described with stent overlapping. Recently, new long tapered stents emerged as a potential tool for treating long coronary lesions. Feasibility of using these new devices for the CTO PCI has not been described. The aim of this work was to describe our initial experience with 50 and 60 mm-long tapered sirolimus-eluting stents (SES) in CTO PCI.