Extended follow-up of the Essential Pro paclitaxel drug-eluting balloon for in-stent restenosis

To the Editor, The use of drug-eluting balloons (DEB) represents a novel and growing alternative therapeutic strategy for patients with in-stent restenosis (ISR).1 A recent publication in REC: Interventional Cardiology presented the real-world safety and efficacy data on the use of the Essential Pro (iVascular, Spain) DEB in patients with ISR.2 A potential limitation of such analysis is that overall outcome event rates may be influenced by those treated more recently with short-term follow-up. These patients might not have been followed long enough to see whether they developed adverse events, thus systematically underestimating the adverse event rates. Therefore, we present the updated follow-up of that cohort reporting the results of patients, at least, 1 year from DEB use, both at the 1-year and total follow-up after DEB use (table 1). Table 1. Updated 1-year and overall follow-up n = 150 Death MI TLR LT MACE 1-year, % (n) 1.3 (2) 2.0 (3) 3.3 (5) 0 (0) 6.0 (9) All follow-up, % (n) 1.3 (2) 2.0 (3) 12.9 (10) 0 (0) 17.7 (14) The 1-year rate are crude estimates, all follow-up analysis are presented as per Kaplan-Meier analysis. LT, lesion thrombosis; MACE, major adverse cardiovascular events; MI, myocardial infarction; TLR, target lesion revascularization. The original study was approved by the local institutional review board. Furthermore, patients gave their prior...