Sirolimus-Eluting Balloon Treatment of Distal Internal Mammary Artery Anastomosis: Optical Coherence Tomography Findings

Drug-eluting balloons (DEB) represent an interesting alternative to current generation drug-eluting stents (DES) in selected anatomic scenarios, such as in-stent restenosis, small-vessel disease and bifurcation lesions, where the systematic implantation of DES may result less appealing.^, In particular, lesions located at the distal anastomosis of a bypass graft (an artificially created bifurcation) constitute a unique anatomic setting, where DEB may overcome some inherent limitations of DES resulting from the implantation of a metallic platform throughout the bypass graft into and across the native distal vessel.

Herein we present, to the best of our knowledge, the first report of the treatment of a lesion located at the distal anastomosis of a left internal mammary artery (LIMA) to the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) with a novel sirolimus-DEB. Interestingly, optical coherence tomography (OCT) findings proved to be of major value to guide the procedure.

[…]