A universal drug delivery catheter for the treatment of infrapopliteal arterial disease using liquid therapy

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to investigate the safety and feasibility of treating infrapopliteal lesions using a novel drug delivery catheter locally delivering liquid paclitaxel. BACKGROUND: Balloon angioplasty is currently the Gold Standard to treat below‐the‐knee disease; however, restenosis continues to be a great challenge following these percutaneous revascularization procedures. METHODS: The Occlusion Perfusion Catheter for Optimal Delivery of Paclitaxel for the Prevention of Endovascular Restenosis (COPPER‐A) study—Below‐the‐Knee Cohort was a prospective, nonrandomized, multicenter, feasibility, and safety study that enrolled 35 patients at 11 participating sites. The safety endpoints at 1, 3, and 6 months were freedom from thrombosis, major amputation in the target limb and target limb related death. The efficacy endpoints were primary patency and freedom from clinically driven target lesion revascularization at 6 months. RESULTS: All patients tolerated the procedure well with no reports of adverse procedural events. Thirty‐five patients were treated with a mean lesion length of 112 ± 81.2 mm with the lesion length range of 20–286 mm. At 6‐month follow‐up, primary patency was 89.3% and freedom from clinically driven target lesion revascularization was 96.4%. No patients demonstrated thrombosis, major amputation in the target limb and target limb related death at the 1‐, 3‐ and 6‐months follow‐up intervals. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this multi‐center study demonstrated that infrapopliteal arteries can be safely and effectively treated with liquid paclitaxel using the occlusion perfusion catheter.