Sabaté M
Secondary revascularisation following intracoronary brachytherapy. [Journal Article]
EuroIntervention 2009 May.:D121-6.
Intracoronary brachytherapy (ICB) was developed as an attempt to prevent restenosis after percutaneous coronary interventions. Early clinical experiences showed impressive results especially in the subset of patients with in-stent restenosis. This led to the design of large multicentre trials that demonstrated the efficacy of ICB as adjunctive therapy in patients with in-stent restenosis as compared to conventional treatment. Despite these outstanding initial results, several limitations arose such as late thrombosis, edge effect or late catch-up phenomenon. These, together with the difficult logistic process to implement the ICB in the cath lab and the development of the drug-eluting stent shelved definitely the technique. This review describes the potentials and limitations of this therapy, as well as the current status in the drug-eluting stent era.
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