Abstract
A 67-year-old woman had undergone end vascular therapy, and had recieved self-expanding stents in the superficial femoral artery (SFA) for peripheral arterial disease at the ages of 65 and 66. Six months later, we used lower extremity angiography to examine intermittent recurrent claudication of the left lower limb. A thrombus was noted in self-expanding stents in the left SFA. Thrombolytic therapy was initiated with 720,000 U/day urokinase, but this was in effective and the left ankle brachial index (ABI) could not be estimated. Thus, we performed a Fogarty thrombectomy for the left SFA with the self-expanding stents inside, and significant amounts of thrombus were removed. Postoperatively, the left ABI improved, to 0.78. We postulated that the specific properties of self-expanding stents, such as flexibility and resistance to, or recovery from deformation by external forces, and balloon pressure could facilitate the procedure.
