State of the art: balloon catheter technologies – drug-coated balloon

Four decades after its introduction into clinical practice, coronary balloon angioplasty is still used during most coronary interventions. Conventional balloon angioplasty is frequently used to predilate complex or severe lesions and remains of major value to optimise the results of stent implantation. Plain balloon angioplasty is still used alone in some anatomic scenarios where stent implantation is not desirable (very small vessels or diffuse lesions, large resistant thrombus burden, side branches of bifurcations). However, this technique is hampered by a relatively high restenosis risk. Recently, drug-coated balloons (DCB) have been shown to provide an attractive new tool for the "leave nothing behind" strategy. Many studies have demonstrated that DCB are indeed safe and effective. Evidence of the value of DCB in patients with ISR is overwhelming. DCB are attractive for selected de novo coronary lesions (small vessels, diffuse disease, side branches). DCB have also gained major evidence supporting their clinical efficacy in the peripheral arterial territory. Further studies are required to elucidate the relative value of DCB compared with alternative strategies (namely new-generation drug-eluting stents) in different clinical and anatomic scenarios.