Advances in below-the-knee endovascular treatment of critical limb ischemia / 中国医师杂志

ABSTRACT

The patients with critical limb ischemia usually has atherosclerosis disease below the knee. The endovascular therapy below the knee is more difficult and less effective compared with iliac-femo-ral and femoral-popliteal vascular. The intraluminal devices have been improved much now, such as the in-vention of drug eluting stent ( DES) and drug eluting balloon ( DEB) , which has improved the results of in-traluminal therapy in femoral-popliteal artery greatly. However, the effect of endovascular therapy with the drug-eluting devices below the knee is controversial. We review a lot of the clinical trails about this issue and found that percutaneous transluminal angioplasty ( PTA) with bailing-out bare metal stent ( BMS) is still the primary strategy and PTA with DES may gain better effect when treating short lesions.