Renal PTA stenting

Full text: Renal artery stenosis (RAS) is a common condition that may lead to hypertension, progressive renal dysfunction and cardiovascular morbidity. Catheter-based therapy for symptomatic, haemodynamically significant, RAS has become the preferred method of revascularization. Balloon angioplasty has been the traditional treatment of choice for fibromuscular dysplasia, however stents are increasingly used for the treatment of atheromatous lesions; in many cases-such as in ostial lesions-, direct stenting is strongly indicated. Despite the increased use of endovascular therapy for renal artery stenosis, there is still controversy regarding the optimal management and the net benefit of this treatment. Several randomized trials of balloon angioplasty or stenting for renal artery stenosis compared with medical therapy alone have been conducted, however these could not show definite advantage of endovascular therapy. Problems encountered with those trials include enrollment of small number of patients, frequent crossover from medical to interventional therapy compromising the intention-to-treat results, or selection of patients that are not expected to show clear benefit. The Angioplasty and Stenting for Renal Artery Lesions (ASTRAL) is the most important of these trials; however, it,s study design was faulty and therefore did not provide conclusive evidence to answer the question of whether angioplasty and stenting or medical therapy is the best treatment for haemodynamically significant RAS. All expectations are now focused on the Cardiovascular Outcomes in Renal Atherosclerotic Lesions (CORAL) trial which was designed to answer the same question, and its methodologies took into consideration the weaknesses of the ASTRAL trial. Regarding stent device itself, it seems that the optimal design is probably a stainless steel, laser cut, open-cells stent mounted on a rapid exchange delivery balloon catheter compatible with 0.014-in and 0.018-in guidewire. As a future direction, refinement of the devices and techniques for renal artery revascularization, along with careful patient selection could possibly improve the clinical outcome after endovascular revascularization of RAS