Objective:

Endovascular therapy offers reduction in costs, morbidity and mortality. Drug eluting stent (DES) Zilver PTX has up to 89.9% patency rates. Our objective is to determinate patency and presence of complications at 6 months with the DES Zilver PTX in comparison to open bypass using ePTFE in the infrainguinal segment.

Methods:

This is a retrospective study with two groups of 15 patients each, with a mean age of 66 years old, with a diagnosis of symptomatic peripheral arterial disease (PAD). The control group was treated with open revascularization using ePTFE graft, whereas the study group was treated with the DES Zilver PTX. Both groups were evaluated immediately, at 3 and 6 months.

Results:

In comparison, both methods were effective to treat PAD. DES Zilver PTX reduced hospitalization length and had a higher tendency to increase functional class. Primary patency was 87% vs 93% and secondary patency was 93% vesus 100% for open revascularization and DES respectively.

Conclusions:

Both methods are effective to treat PAD in the infrainguinal segment. Our results tend to favor DES over open revascularization with synthetic graft.