Treatment of Coronary ARtery bIfurcation Narrowing by AXxess Stent Implantation

Despite a comprehensive understanding of the physiological and technical issues regarding the coronary bifurcations lesions, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in this setting remains challenging. When compared with non-bifurcation lesions, treatment of bifurcation lesions is associated with increased adverse clinical events and inferior angiographic outcomes including procedural complications. This is due to several technical challenges, including both anatomical (proximal-to-distal vessel mismatch [tapering], angulation and calcification) and procedural (plaque shift, and side-branch [SB] closure) features. Current balloon-expandable drug-eluting stent (DES) have not been designed to treat the bifurcation lesions; in particular, the inability of DES to adequately scaffold and preserve the ostium of SB represents a the major reason of failure, because this is the most common site for restenosis. Recently a large variety of dedicated bifurcation stents have been developed in order to 1) provide an easier access to the SB and to scaffold more effectively its ostium, and 2) adapt to main vassel (MV) tapering, and to the bifurcation anatomy.