title: Secondary revascularisation following intracoronary brachytherapy.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Interventional Cardiology Unit, Cardiology Department, Sant Pau University Hospital, Barcelona, Spain. msabatet@santpau.cat
authors.forename: Manel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sabaté
mesh_terms: D015906:Angioplasty, Balloon, Coronary / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000295:instrumentation; D001918:Brachytherapy / Q000009:adverse effects; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D023903:Coronary Restenosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000532:radiotherapy / Q000628:therapy*; D054855:Drug-Eluting Stents; D006801:Humans; D008670:Metals; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D012008:Recurrence; D015607:Stents; D013927:Thrombosis / Q000209:etiology; D017211:Treatment Failure
chemical_list: D008670:Metals