Excellence in Peripheral Arterial Disease Treatment of Superficial Femoral Artery Disease With Drug-eluting Stents

Study Summary

The superficial femoral artery (SFA) is frequently involved in atherosclerosis and is the most common target of lower extremity endovascular procedures performed in patients with claudication. Endovascular treatment of SFA is challenging, given its exceptional predisposition to atherosclerosis and its exposure to extreme mechanical forces of extension, compression, torsion and flexion. The SFA is located in a fibro-muscular canal, follows a tortuous course and is considered a 'hostile' location for endovascular procedures, especially stents due to the risk of stent fracture. On the other hand, durability of balloon angioplasty in the SFA is dismal (25% patency at 1 year). Therefore, Nitinol (a metal alloy of nickel and titanium) stent implantation is the mainstay of endovascular SFA interventions when balloon angioplasty (PTA) leads to sub-optimal results during a procedure. It is used in over 70% of all cases and in nearly 100% of all femoro-popliteal (FP) CTO (chronic total occlusions) and long (≥60 mm) interventions. Endovascular treatment of SFA is challenging and restenosis is the most common cause for the lack of durability of a SFA peripheral vascular interventional procedure.5 Restenosis rates of SFA bare metal (nitinol) stents or BMS at 1 year exceeds 50% for lesions ≥60 mm in length or CTO. Stent based treatment of the SFA may not offer any additional advantage for short non-CTO (\<60 mm) lesions compared to PTA. In a recent study, primarily comparing drug-eluting stents (DES) to balloon angioplasty in the SFA, 12 month patency rates were 83.1% and 32.8%, respectively for DES and balloon angioplasty arms. However, there are no head-to head studies randomized studies comparing DES and BMS in the SFA. Thus, endovascular SFA intervention in patients with symptomatic PAD is an area of urgent need for high-quality evidence as volume of these procedures continues to rise exponentially in the U.S. and around the world, largely on the basis of insufficient evidenc

Primary Outcome

The primary endpoint is to compare the SFA stent patency (defined as peak systolic velocity ration or PSVR≥2.5) at 12 months following percutaneous revascularization of SFA with implantation of either DES or BMS, assigned randomly to each lesion.

Interventions

• DEVICE Bare metal stent
• DEVICE Drug-eluting stent