A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Atherectomy Plus Balloon Angioplasty Versus Balloon Angioplasty Alone for Infrapopliteal Arterial Disease

Objective: The article aimed to compare the efficiency and safety of atherectomy plus balloon angioplasty (BA) with BA alone for the treatment of infrapopliteal arterial disease. Methods: According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library database were searched for studies comparing atherectomy plus angioplasty and angioplasty alone in treating infrapopliteal artery lesions until November 2022. The endpoints included technical success, primary patency, clinically-driven target lesion revascularization (CD-TLR), periprocedural complications, distal embolization, target limb major amputation, and all-cause mortality. Results: Ten studies met the requirements of our meta-analysis, including 7723 patients in the atherectomy plus BA group and 2299 patients in the BA alone group. The meta-analysis showed that atherectomy plus BA was associated with reduced CD-TLR (odds ratio [OR]: 0.51, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.34, 0.78, p=0.002) and target limb major amputation (OR: 0.43, 95% CI: 0.19, 1.01, p=0.05) at 12-month follow-up. No statistically significant difference was found in technical success, primary patency, periprocedural complications, distal embolization, or all-cause mortality. Subgroup analysis found a higher rate of primary patency at 6 and 12 months (6 months: OR: 2.26, 95% CI: 1.11, 4.60, p=0.02; 12 months: OR: 2.38, 95% CI: 1.16, 4.86, p=0.02), and lower rates of CD-TLR (OR: 0.45, 95% CI: 0.25, 0.82, p=0.009) and target limb major amputation (OR: 0.43, 95% CI: 0.19, 1.01, p=0.05) at 12 months in patients treated with atherectomy plus drug-coated balloon (DCB) but not in patients treated with atherectomy plus plain old balloon angioplasty (POBA). Conclusions: This meta-analysis suggests that compared with BA alone, atherectomy plus BA may reduce the need for CD-TLR and the incidence of target limb major amputation at 12-month follow-up in the treatment of infrapopliteal artery occlusive lesions, even though there are no significant advantages in technical success, primary patency, periprocedural complications, distal embolization, or all-cause mortality. To go further, atherectomy plus DCB shows significant benefits in primary patency, CD-TLR, and target limb major amputation rate but atherectomy plus POBA does not’. However, due to the limitations of this article, more randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are needed to confirm these conclusions. Clinical Impact According to our research, atherectomy combined with BA has the advantages of higher primary patency rate, lower CD-TLR and target limb significant amputation rate in treating infrapopliteal artery occlusive lesions, which may replace the current mainstream surgical method ---BA alone. For the clinician, although the surgery may take longer, it will significantly improve the prognosis and quality of life of patients and hold considerable significance for the management of patients with infrapopliteal arterial disease. Based on the characteristics of infrapopliteal artery disease, this study explored the feasibility of atherectomy combined with BA for infrapopliteal artery disease. Moreover, we found that atherectomy combined with DCB had better clinical efficacy, which should be the innovation of this study.