Stent Treatment Can Help Maintain Improved Quality of Life

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) sufferers maintain improved quality of life – including being able to walk farther – three years after being treated with stents to open up their blocked leg arteries, according to the most recent results of the STROLL trial.

Leg arteries remained open in nearly three-quarters of patients who were treated with nickel titanium (nitinol) stents, and they continued to enjoy improved quality of life, according to the study.

“It’s impressive that the stent continued to perform so well even three years after treatment,” said Michael R. Jaff, D.O., lead author of the study and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. “Patients still felt much better and walked farther and faster than they did before treatment.”

PAD is a form of cardiovascular disease in which plaque builds up in the walls of the arteries, reducing or blocking blood flow. Patients with PAD often suffer from blockages in the main blood vessel in the leg, the superficial femoral artery, which can cause intermittent claudication, or pain while walking or during physical activity.

In the study, self-expanding stents were placed in blockages in the superficial femoral artery of 250 patients. Three years after treatment, 72.7 percent of arteries remained opened in 209 patients. While 3.6 percent of stents had fractured, all were the least-severe form, meaning they caused no problems and continued to keep the arteries open. Blood pressure in the legs remained significantly improved, with almost no change over three years. Further, patients maintained their improved health-related quality of life as measured by several factors, including symptoms and walking distance and speed.

STROLL (which stands for S.M.A.R.T.  Nitinol Self-Expanding Stent in the TReatment of Obstructive SuperficiaL FemoraL Artery Disease) is a multicenter, nonrandomized, single-arm prospective trial studying the safety and efficacy of the S.M.A.R.T. stent. Patients were treated at one of 39 centers.