ABSTRACT
Percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) are widely used to treat patients with symptomatic coronary artery disease, which usually presents as angina or myocardial infarction (1). PCI procedures include balloon dilation, endoluminal stenting, excisional atherectomy, intravascular brachytherapy, and laser ablation. Successful treatment of stenotic coronary arteries by PCI is limited by the occurrences of acute vessel occlusion and late restenosis. Restenosis is characterized by reobstruction of the lumen by 50% or more (2). Although the restenosis rates decrease with stenting (3-5), restenosis remains a serious clinical problem, particularly in multivessel disease. This is because of increasing case complexity and aggressive neointimal proliferation due to the inflammatory reaction triggered by the injury and the implanted stent (6).
