Long-term follow-up after percutaneous transluminal angioplasty of the distal abdominal aorta.

Aortoiliac disease can be either treated with surgery-endarterectomy for localized aortic disease or with bypass graft placement for more extensive aortoiliac disease--or with percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA), which has become an established method. Long term results of surgery are well documented in literature, but long term results of distal aortic PTA are scarce, furthermore angiographic follow-up is very uncommon. We report about a patient with isolated aorta abdominalis stenosis due to atherosclerotic disease who underwent PTA in 1982 and had an angiographic follow-up four and twenty years later, thus we demonstrate that patency can be obtained even after twenty years.