[Endovascular radioprevention of intimal hyperplasia after percutaneous transluminal angioplasty of peripheral blood vessels].

The prognosis of interventionally treated arterial occlusive vessel disease in peripheral arteries is not significantly better with the use of stents than with percutaneous transluminar angioplasty. The rate of restenosis or reocclusion in dilated or recanalized and stented peripheral arteries is reported as up to 40%, depending on location and author. In the early phase thrombotic processes are responsible which then demonstrate histologically confirmed intimal hyperplasia. On the basis of many years of radiotherapy experience in the treatment of benign hyperplastic tissue alterations, brachytherapy could be introduced as a method for prophylaxis of vessel restenoses. The early difficulties with this method were due to the inadequacies of the equipment. The development of small radiation sources with high specific activity now enables these target volumes to be reached. The clinical experience so far indicates high efficiency of this method. It can be expected that the range of indications for adjuvant endoluminal irradiation will broaden in the future.