MANAGEMENT OF RESISTANT CORONARY LESIONS BY THE CUTTING BALLOON CATHETER - INITIAL EXPERIENCE

Resistant coronary lesions remain a challenge for modern angioplasty. Classical approaches include high-pressure inflations, prolonged infla tions, or balloon oversizing. More recently, new technologies like rot ablator, atherectomy, or laser have been proposed as adjunct to balloo n angioplasty for the treatment of these specific lesions. However, al l these technologies remain more difficult to handle, costly, and they do not offer long-term benefit over conventional methods. Therefore, a simple device such as the cutting balloon catheter which has been de veloped from a standard over the wire balloon catheter, may prove to b e useful in resistant coronary lesions. We present our single center e xperience using the new cutting balloon catheter in six resistant lesi ons. (C) 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.