Background: Although stent implantation is used worldwide for peripheral arterial disease, there is little data on the safety and long-term patency of stents implanted for venous disease.
Methods and results: We studied 13 patients with 14 lesions (6 males, 7 females, mean age: 63.2±10.2 years) diagnosed with venous stenosis and who underwent venous stenting. We examined the location of the stenosis, safety of venous stenting, implantation success rate, and long-term stent patency rate. All patients were suffering from venous stenosis in the left common iliac vein because of iliac vein compression syndrome. No major complications occurred during stent implantation. Acute stent occlusion occurred in 1 patient, who was given additional thrombolytic therapy. Of the 13 patients, 10 underwent venography or contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) during mid-term follow-up (mean: 12.9±16.1 months), and only 1 stent was occluded, resulting in a patency rate of 90.0%. The latter patient decided to stop taking warfarin soon after stent implantation. Furthermore, 5 patients underwent contrast-enhanced CT to assess the long-term patency of their stents (mean: 79.6±31.2 months), and none was occluded.
Conclusions: Venous stents display a high long-term patency rate, and hence are a useful tool for treating iliac venous stenosis.