Eluvia™ peripheral stent system for the treatment of peripheral lesions above the knee

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Drug-eluting stents promise to reduce restenosis following endovascular treatment of diseased arteries, but technologies used in peripheral arteries of the leg have not yet achieved desired success rates.

Areas covered: The rationale behind the development of the Eluvia^TM Drug-Eluting Vascular Stent (Boston Scientific, Marlborough, MA) is described and current preclinical and clinical evidence related to use of the stent is reviewed.

Expert opinion: Stents remain an important endovascular treatment option for femoropopliteal lesions, especially those that are long, occluded, and calcified. Drug-eluting stent technologies show promise to improve patency rates, potentially shifting the primary treatment preference away from balloon-based treatment. The available preclinical and clinical data on treatment with Eluvia^TM suggest that prolonged paclitaxel elution in the femoropopliteal arteries prevents restenosis and may reduce the need for reintervention.

KEYWORDS:

• Drug-eluting stent
• endovascular procedures
• paclitaxel
• peripheral arterial disease

Article highlights

• Restenosis following stent placement to treat atherosclerotic lesions in the femoropopliteal segment occurs over a longer time period than that observed following coronary stenting, necessitating a prolonged drug elution profile.

• A polymeric carrier was needed to control the duration and dose of drug released from the stent, and the fluoropolymer PVDF-HFP has a proven safety record.

• Current clinical data involving the Eluvia^TM stent suggest that the polymer/drug dose combination results in an antirestenotic effect during the period when peripheral restenosis is typically observed, leading to a high clinical vessel patency rate.

• Confirmatory results from ongoing preclinical and clinical studies are anticipated.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Jaydeep Kokate, PhD and Elizabeth Davis, PhD, both from Boston Scientific, Maple Grove, MN, for insight into the rationale for and history of the development of the Eluvia^TM stent, and for medical writing assistance, respectively.

Declaration of interest

S Müller-Hülsbeck serves as a consultant for Boston Scientific, and has received consulting fees, speaker honorarium and support for accommodation and traveling when presenting BSC-related data. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. Writing assistance was utilized in the preparation of this manuscript, it was funded by Boston Scientific and carried out by Elizabeth Davis, PhD.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.