Drug-Eluting Balloon Angioplasty Treatment Has Potential
Drug-eluting balloons have shown promise as a treatment for restenosis in diabetic populations. In 40 percent of patients that get treatment for blocked arteries, those arteries will become obstructed once again. Drug-eluting balloons have had better success in treating patients and preventing blocked arteries from reemerging. The Drug-Eluting Balloon in Peripheral Intervention for In-Stent Restenosis study, which was published in the current issue of the Journal of Endovascular Therapy, looks at diabetic patients who had undergone drug-eluting balloon angioplasty to treat in-stent restenosis.
The study’s results showed that patients treated with drug-eluting balloons had a better chance at reduction of restenosis in comparison to a group of patients that were treated with standard balloon angioplasty. Patients that were treated with the former had only a 19.5 percent chance of their arteries becoming obstructed again, while patients treated with standard balloons had a 71.8 rate of recurrence. The study took place over a year’s duration, and experts believe that it will reassure doctors of the safety and health properties of drug-eluting balloon technology. While other drugs and treatment strategies for restenosis have garnered inconclusive results, the results for drug-eluting balloons in this study were undeniably positive. Researchers believe that the next step is more studies in order to find the limitations of drug-eluting balloon treatment, and to see if it can be successful within certain populations. The researchers acknowledge that their study can’t conclude the debate on drug-eluting balloon treatment, but they note that the results for diabetic patients “are particularly impressive in light of the high-risk patient population being treated.”