Purpose: To evaluate the association between a chronic total occlusion (CTO) and long-term outcomes among patients undergoing endovascular intervention to the external iliac artery (EIA).
Methods: A 2-center retrospective study was conducted of 331 patients (mean age 64.7±12.7 years; 221 men) who underwent endovascular intervention for 481 EIA atherosclerotic lesions between 2006 and 2016. A quarter of the lesions (115, 23.9%) were CTOs. The majority of patients (184, 60.9%) were treated for claudication; 172 (38%) lesions were TransAtlantic Inter-Society Consensus type C or D. Target lesion revascularization (TLR) and major adverse limb event (MALE) rates were compared between lesions with or without an EIA CTO. A Cox proportional hazard model was subsequently developed to determine baseline variables associated with long-term outcomes after successful endovascular intervention of stented EIAs; outcomes are presented as the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI).
Results: The mean lesion length was longer (84 vs 50 mm, p<0.001) among patients treated for CTOs. While overall the target lesion failure rates were very low (2.8%), vessel perforation (2.7% vs 0.3%, p=0.02) and distal embolization (2.7% vs 0.9%, p=0.02) were more common in the CTO group. Among 377 successfully crossed and stented lesions (93 CTOs), the overall 1-year primary patency was 78% and secondary patency was 92%. One-year and 5-year TLR rates were 8.2% and 15.4%, respectively. CTO intervention was associated with higher 5-year TLR rates in the unadjusted analysis (HR 1.72, 95% CI 1.00 to 2.56, p=0.050), but the association did not remain significant after multivariable adjustment.
Conclusion: Intervention to EIA CTOs is associated with increased intraprocedural complexity but with similar midterm outcomes, including high patency and low rates of TLR to 5 years.
Keywords: angioplasty; atherosclerotic disease; chronic total occlusions; external iliac artery; patency; peripheral artery disease; stenosis; stent; target lesion revascularization.