Major Complications of Deep Venous Stenting

Deep venous stent placement has developed into a primary treatment modality for venous obstruction in recent decades. Reported rates of complications are low in the literature and are based mainly on case reports and single-centre cohorts. Interventionalists performing these procedures must be aware of the occurrence of complications associated with stent placement to counsel patients adequately and promote avoidance through optimal procedural approach. This study aims to determine the incidence of serious complications associated with iliocaval and iliofemoral stent placement in a cohort of patients from 3 major tertiary deep venous referral centres.

Data were collated from January 2014 to September 2023. The following major complications were included in the analysis: death, major bleeding requiring transfusion, massive pulmonary embolism, any complication which required endovascular or open surgical intervention, vessel rupture, acute kidney injury requiring dialysis, stent crushing, fracture, migration, involution or erosion.

One thousand eight hundred fourteen (1814) patients were treated for acute or chronic deep venous pathology during the 9-year study period. Sixty-one patients (3.3%) experienced a major stent-related complication. The most frequently reported complication was stent crushing (n = 18, 29.5%), followed by stent fracture (n = 10, 16.4%) and erosion of the stent through the vessel wall (n = 8, 13.1%). Death was a rare event (0.2%).

Deep venous stent placement is a safe procedure with low rates of major complications. It is incumbent upon operators to be aware of the risks associated with these procedures, however, rare, so that they may obtain fully informed consent from patients.