Endovascular treatment of peripheral vascular lesions with stent-grafts.

Received 18 April 2005; revision requested 19 May 2005; revision received 25 May 2005; accepted 10 June 2005. The concept of a transluminally placed endovascular graft was initially proposed by Dotter in 1969 (1). Subsequently, Balko et al. (2) reported the transfemoral placement of an intraluminal polyurethane-coated prosthesis in a sheep abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) model. The first report of the use of this technique in man was by Parodi et al. (3). They reported the treatment of AAAs by transfemoral intraluminal Dacron grafts, anchored by modified stainless steel stents. Since then, endovascular stent-graft placement has been increasingly used to treat vascular lesions, mainly AAAs. There are also a number of reports on AAA treatment of iatrogenic or traumatic vascular lesions, namely pseudoaneurysms, arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs), arterial ruptures, and perforations (4-7).