Should we avoid ostial implantations of Wiktor stents?

Complications arising during stent implantations in coronary arteries have been reduced by technological progress and the accumulated experience of interventional cardiologists. Retrospective and prospective randomized studies with several types of stents are currently available and show improved short and mid-term results. Wiktor stent provides increased flexibility for ease of implantation particularly in curved lesions. However, the flexibility of the Wiktor stent is also associated with low resistance in the longitudinal axis. We report four cases (in 4 out of 6 ostial lesions treated and 4 out of 43 Wiktor stents implanted during a 9-month period) in which stents have become unraveled during procedures on ostial lesions (2 saphenous venous grafts and 2 native coronary arteries). Death occurred in one case and one patient was treated by emergency coronary bypass surgery. In three cases the distal extremity of the guiding catheter stretched the stent meshes during the final control angiograms, and in one case the stent was stretched during withdrawal of the deflated balloon into the guiding catheter. We believe that it is preferable to avoid using this stent in ostial lesions.