Feasibility and Clinical Outcomes of Peripheral Drug-Coated Balloon in High-Risk Patients with Femoropopliteal Disease

Background Clinical outcomes of the drug-coated balloon (DCB) procedure in high-risk patients with femoropopliteal (FP) disease have not been investigated sufficiently. Methods This retrospective, single-center study analyzed 87 patients (39% dialysis) and 97 affected legs (64% critical limb ischemia [CLI]) that underwent DCB for symptomatic FP disease from March 2013 to September 2014. Risk stratification was based on FeDCLIP (female, diabetes, dialysis, CLI, lesion length >150 mm and poor runoff) score. The DCB outcomes among the different risk groups were compared and factors predicting restenosis were analyzed during follow-up. Results Most of study participants (84%) were moderate to high-risk patients. The procedural success rate was 100% and the 30-day major adverse vascular event rate was 2.1%. The mean lesion length was 178 ± 106 mm and the mean follow-up time was 428 ± 145 (range 50 782) days. The binary restenosis-free and clinically driven target lesion revascularization (CD-TLR)-free rates at 12 months were 77.5% and 84.3%, respectively, for all participants. No significant differences were observed in 1-year binary restenosis and CD-TLR rates in the low-, moderate-, and high-risk groups (60%, 84%, and 73%: p = 0.396; 78%, 89%, and 80%: p = 0.635, respectively). In multivariate analysis, lesion length >150 mm (Hazard ratio [HR]: 8.00, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.12 to 55.6, p = 0.038) and Rutherford class 6 (HR: 7.09, 95% CI, 1.15 to 43.5, p = 0.034) were identified as independent predictors of binary restenosis. Conclusions Despite general comorbidities and advanced limb ischemia, 1-year outcomes of DCB in high-risk patients with FP disease were effective. The DCB procedure holds promise to improve vessel patency; however, lesion length >150 mm and major tissue loss were independent predictors for binary restenosis after the treatment. ? 2015 Jang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.