Outcomes of atherectomy in patients undergoing lower extremity revascularisation

There is a paucity of real-world data on the in-hospital (IH) and post-discharge outcomes in patients undergoing lower extremity peripheral vascular intervention (PVI) with adjunctive atherectomy.

In this retrospective, registry-based study, we evaluated IH and post-discharge outcomes among patients undergoing PVI, treated with or without atherectomy, in the National Cardiovascular Data Registry PVI Registry.

The IH composite endpoint included procedural complications, bleeding or thrombosis. The primary out-of-hospital endpoint was major amputation at 1 year. Secondary endpoints included repeat endovascular or surgical revascularisation and death. Multivariable regression was used to identify predictors of atherectomy use and its association with clinical endpoints.

A total of 30,847 patients underwent PVI from 2014 to 2019, including 10,971 (35.6%) treated with atherectomy. The unadjusted rate of the IH endpoint occurred in 524 (4.8%) of the procedures involving atherectomy and 1,041 (5.3%) of non-atherectomy procedures (p=0.07). After adjustment, the use of atherectomy was not associated with an increased risk of the combined IH endpoint (p=0.68). In the 6,889 (22.4%) patients with out-of-hospital data, atherectomy was associated with a reduced risk of amputation (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.67, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.51-0.85; p<0.01) and surgical revascularisation (aHR 0.63, 95% CI: 0.44-0.89; p=0.017), no difference in death rates (p=0.10), but an increased risk of endovascular revascularisation (aHR 1.21, 95% CI: 1.06-1.39; p<0.01) at 1 year.

The use of atherectomy during PVI is common and is not associated with an increase in IH adverse events. Longitudinally, patients treated with atherectomy undergo repeat endovascular reintervention more frequently but experience a reduced risk of amputation and surgical revascularisation.