Insertion Of A Stent May Save From Leg Amputation

Insertion Of A Stent May Save From Leg Amputation.
When angioplasty fails, patients with cruel external arterial disease may now have another option. A drug-releasing stent placed in the blocked artery below the knee might re-establish blood flow, renewed investigation shows.

Critical limb ischemia, the most severe form of peripheral arterial disease (PAD), causes more than 100000 part amputations in the United States each year. Now, researchers from Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City chance insertion of a stent can curb many of these amputations.

In "Traditional balloon angioplasty is plagued by high incidence failure, restenosis (recurrence) and impotence to elevate the patient's symptoms," said lead researcher Dr Robert A Lookstein, colleague director of Mount Sinai's division of interventional radiology. Patients with deprecative limb ischemia have leg pain even when resting and sores that don't heal because of lack of circulation. They are at jeopardize of gangrene and amputation.

But placing a stent in the affected artery during angioplasty greatly improves these problems. The drug-eluting stent keeps the narrowed artery humanitarian and releases a medication for several weeks after implantation, preventing the artery from closing again. "Patients with the least wicked texture of the (severe) disease, those with pain at rest, as well as the patients with minor skin infection of their legs, were able to keep off major amputation".

But some patients with severe disease and those with gangrene still lost a limb who was scheduled to adduce the finding Monday at the Society of Interventional Radiology's annual meeting in Tampa, Fla. For the study, Lookstein's body followed 53 patients with critical limb ischemia who had a all-out of 94 drug-eluting stents implanted to treat leg arteries that would not stay open after angioplasty alone. These are the same stents commonly old to open blocked coronary arteries. The remedying was effective in all the patients, the researchers said.