Stent-graft applications in peripheral non-atherosclerotic arterial lesions.

T he use of endovascular techniques for the treatment of various arterial pathologies has increased significantly during the last decade (1). Almost all arterial territories have been treated, including aortic, coronary, cerebral, and peripheral arterial circulation; in most cases, promising results have been achieved for different types of lesions. For iatrogenic, traumatic, and spontaneous arterial lesions in which the parent artery is essential and thus, must be preserved, stent-grafts appear to be an alternative tool among the various endovascular and surgical treatment methods (2–8). Nonetheless, the long-term patency and durability of stent-grafts still remains a major concern due to the lack of long-term randomized studies in the literature. Computed tomography angiography (CTA) is a valuable tool in the diagnosis of vascular pathologies and is growing in popularity very rapidly due to the application of new technologies, such as multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) (9, 10). CTA is a 3D technique that can provide views of the vessels from different orientations, as well as details of vessel walls. CTA can be useful for planning therapy by mapping out the arterial anatomy prior to intervention. We have been using 16-MDCT angiography for the last 2 years in our department and have used the CTA technique as a part of our peripheral stent-graft follow-up protocol because of its non-invasive nature and accurate image quality. Some of our diagnostic computed tomography (CT) images in this study were obtained with spiral CT. Herein we report various non-aortic, non-atherosclerotic arterial lesions treated with endografts, some with patency of 6 years. The diagnostic significance of CTA as well as its use in the follow-up of our endograft cases are addressed.