ABSTRACT
Introduction Balloon percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) has a major role in the treatment of coronary and peripheral significant stenoses and is now the first treatment to be proposed. Nevertheless, this technique alone has some limitations in its application to some specific subgroups of complex lesions, such as calcified, ulcerated, eccentric, long lesions, and thrombotic lesions with the risk of embolization. There is also the problem of restenosis, with a high restenosis rate in some locations (e.g. femoropopliteal arteries, small vessels, ostial lesions, lesions at bifurcations, long lesions, diabetic patients, etc).
