RESUMO
For many years, surgical bypass has been considered mainstream therapy of below-the-knee peripheral arterial occlusive disease. The introduction of endovascular techniques and devices has made percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) and stenting feasible and safe in these patients. However, PTA has a significant risk of restenosis by elastic recoil and stenting is associated with restenosis by neointinal hyperplasia and vessel wall remodeling. With the advent of coronary artery drug eluting stent (DES), these limitations of PTA and stenting have been circumvented. Herein, we report a successful case of DES implantation for below-the-knee chronic total occlusion lesion. A 65-year-old male patient presented with severe claudication on his left leg. Computed tomography angiography showed long segment total occlusion involving the left distal superficial femoral, popliteal and proximal anterior tibial arteries. We tried to treat the lesion using endovascular surgery. During balloon angioplasty, flow limiting dissection developed in the proximal anterior tibial artery and we deployed a DES (Cypher, Cordis, Johnson & Johnson, USA) in that lesion. To our knowledge, this is the first report of DES for the treatment of below-the-knee chronic total occlusion lesion in Korea.