Interventional cardiologists need to have a range of approaches and devices in their toolbox to treat the increasingly complex patient population entering the cath lab. Key among them, Victor Jimenez (Vigo, Spain) tells Cardiovascular News, are drug-coated balloons (DCBs), which can be used in a range of clinical scenarios in a DCB-only percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) approach, or alongside drug-eluting stents (DESs) as part of a hybrid PCI strategy.
Jimenez notes that there is no class effect with DCBs. Therefore, their clinical results should be evaluated in specific clinical studies for each particular device. The availability of DCBs backed by a strong body of evidence to demonstrate both safety and efficacy, such as the SeQuent® DCB family of devices, is changing the way that interventional cardiologists think about tackling coronary artery disease, and more physicians will look towards a DCB-first strategy in the future, Jimenez comments, as they seek to avoid implanting a metallic scaffold in the coronary arteries.
“DCBs and stents are complementary devices and not the opposite,” he says in this interview, in which he discusses how DCBs can address some of the limitations of DES platforms, the clinical scenarios in which balloons are favourable, and how the DCB fits into the modern cardiology toolbox.
This video is sponsored by B Braun Melsungen AG.
