Endovascular Treatment of Peripheral Artery Disease

Endovascular intervention for peripheral artery disease (PAD) is indicated for lifestyle-limiting claudication or limb preservation in patients with critical limb ischemia. Currently, procedural success rates are improving for increasingly complex disease due to expanding operator experience and improvements in available technology. However, the evidence base lags behind procedural success, with few randomized comparisons among the available devices to achieve revascularization. Furthermore, long-term patency, particularly, at the femoropopliteal segment for patients with claudication, remains suboptimal. Endovascular therapy for PAD should be viewed as a valuable therapeutic modality that is complementary to medical therapy and an alteranative to surgery in patients with claudication and as an integral part of achieving limb salvage in patients with critical limb ischemia.