Correspondence on "Comparison of drug-coated balloon with conventional balloon for angioplasty in symptomatic intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis" by Tang et al

We read with interest the excellent work by Tang et al,1 which compared the safety and efficacy of drug-coated balloon (DCB) with conventional balloon (CB) in endovascular therapy for patients with symptomatic intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis (ICAS). The results indicated that only DCB angioplasty could effectively decrease the incidence of restenosis compared with only CB angioplasty. However, we noticed that the definition of technical success (residual stenosis ≤50%) and restenosis (only stenosis >50% without absolute luminal loss) in this study was not as rigorous as previously,2 although there are different restenosis definitions. Therefore, to some extent, in this patient population the restenosis rates of both groups (6.3% and 31.3%) might be higher than they actually are. On the other hand, the rate of remedial stent implantation in this study was lower than that in our previous studies.3 4 As we know, elastic...
Source: Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery - Category: Neurosurgery Authors: Tags: Ischemic stroke Source Type: research