Current status of techniques to perform coronary atherosclerotic plaque modification

Reviewed by James Ives, M.Psych. (Editor)Sep 11 2018

In the current issue of Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications (Volume3, Number 2, 2018, pp. 203-214(12); DOI: https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2017.0046 Ahmad A. Mahmoud, Ahmed N. Mahmoud, Akram Y. Elgendy and R. David Anderson from the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA consider the current status of coronary atherectomy.

There are several techniques for performing coronary atherosclerotic plaque modification, known as atherectomy. Historically, clinical trials show mostly equivalence between various coronary atherectomy techniques, balloon angioplasty, and percutaneous coronary stenting. In the last several years the use of a given atherectomy technique has been mostly as a means of facilitating stent delivery in vessels that are heavily calcified. No clinical trials have shown superiority of any atherectomy method over more standard techniques of percutaneous coronary intervention. The authors discuss directional atherectomy, rotational atherectomy, orbital atherectomy and laser atherectomy techniques and present the pertinent trial data. Lastly, future directions are detailed.

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