This study aimed to determine if the different
stent types used in the treatment of infrapopliteal
arterial occlusive disease provide any significant advantage over one another at 6 and 12-month follow-up. Consecutive patients undergoing stenting of infrapopliteal lesions were enrolled into a non-randomised prospective registry and followed-up for 1 year. Outcome measures included binary restenosis, target lesion revascularisation, major
amputation, and change in Rutherford-Becker score and ankle-brachial index (ABI).Thirty-three patients were enrolled including four patients with bilateral disease. There were 20 target vessels in the
drug-eluting stent (DES) group, 13 target vessels in the balloon-expandable bare
metal stent (BE-BMS) group and 14 target vessels in the self expandableb are
metal stent (SE-BMS) group. Most of the patients in the study were octogenarians except in the SE-BMS group where the mean age was 73 ± 9 years. At 12 months, seven patients had died (DES = 6, BE-BMS = 1) from cardiac and
cancer-related diseases. In-
stent and peri-
stent binary restenosis were non-statistically different between all three groups. There was a nonstatistically significant trend towards higher target vessel revascularisation in the BE-BMS group. Survival curves in all
stent types demonstrated restenosis to occur within the first 6 months post-procedure. There was no significant difference in the change in Rutherford-Becker score or ABI between the groups. No major limb
amputations occurred during the 12-month period. In conclusion,we did not detect a significant difference in
stent performance between the different
stent types used to treat infrapopliteal
arterial occlusive disease. The choice of
stent did not seem to affect patient survival or major
amputation-free survival at 1-year follow-up.