Bypass Surgery after Endovascular Therapy for Infrapopliteal Lesion Is Not a Poor Outcome Compared with Initial Bypass Surgery by Vascular Surgeons.

BACKGROUND: It is unclear whether prior endovascular therapy (EVT) adversely affects bypass surgery. The aim of this study is to investigate treatment outcomes between initial bypass (bypass-first) and bypass surgery after EVT (EVT-first).

METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of critical limb ischemia patients undergoing infrapopliteal bypass between November 2006 and December 2015. Graft patency, limb salvage (LS), amputation-free survival (AFS), and overall survival (OS) were examined between bypass-first and EVT-first groups.

RESULTS: The subjects in this study were 75 patients and 82 limbs in the bypass-first group and 24 patients and 24 limbs in the EVT-first group. The average age was higher in EVT-first group (P = 0.03). The percentage of inframalleolar bypass was higher in the EVT-first group (P = 0.002). Primary patency at 1 and 2 years was 72.0% and 67.5% for the bypass-first group and 53.1% and 47.2% for the EVT-first group, respectively (P = 0.04). Inframalleolar bypass was a risk factor for lower primary patency (hazard ratio 3.07, 95% confidence interval 1.18-8.51, P = 0.02) in multivariate analysis, while there were no differences in secondary patency, LS, AFS, and OS.

CONCLUSIONS: Bypass surgery after EVT has lower primary patency rates in comparison with primary bypass in patients submitted to infrapopliteal revascularization. Although very heterogeneous study population with a lot of bias in the indication of the revascularization, LS, OS and AFS are not affected by previous EVT.