ABSTRACT
Stents have significantly changed the field of interventional therapy. They are becoming more widely used in clinical practice. Stents in femoropopliteal vessels do not significantly improve the long-term patency rates when compared to angioplasty alone. The usual indications for stenting in the femoropopliteal vessels are therefore left for suboptimal balloon angioplasty results with residual stenosis or flow-limiting dissections. The RAVEL (RAndomized, double-blind study with the sirolimus-eluting BX VElocity balloon expandable stent in the treatment of patients with de novo native coronary artery Lesions) trial is a multicenter prospective trial comparing a bare metal stent to a drug-coated stent. In this trial, 238 patients were randomized to a single rapamycincoated stent versus a bare metal BX Velocity stent. Drug-eluting stents represent a new and exciting approach to reduce the incidence of restenosis. Directions of drug-eluting stents include different classes of drug that are potential agents for inhibition of restenosis to the combination of biodegradability with drug delivery, or local gene therapy.
