Failed Angioplasty Treatment

Your symptoms, such as chest pain, shortness of breath, or fatigue, return or worsen.

You find it harder to exercise or climb stairs.

Your doctor wants to evaluate blockages that were not severe enough to treat when your stent was inserted.

Routine yearly stress tests are usually not required.

You have undergone multiple heart procedures, such as stent placement after bypass surgery.

Failure of PTCA may result from the inability to cross the lesion with a guidewire.

Failure may also occur because of balloon catheter limitations.

Rigid lesions may not dilate completely during the procedure.

Laser Balloon Angioplasty (LBA), first described by Spears, has been shown experimentally to reduce arterial recoil and treat arterial dissections, mechanical perforations, and thrombus formation.

Clinical trials of LBA for both successful and failed PTCA procedures are ongoing.

Coronary artery bypass graft surgery uses blood vessels from other parts of the body.

The grafts come from the patient's own arteries and veins in the chest, leg, or arm.

Bypass surgery is a good treatment option for patients, especially those with diabetes, who have coronary restenosis.

Patients who have bare-metal stents need to take antiplatelet medication for at least 4 weeks after the procedure.

Patients who have a drug-eluting stent need to take antiplatelet medication for at least one year after the procedure, and longer for high-risk patients.