Mesenteric artery stenting for chronic mesenteric ischemia

Chronic mesenteric ischemia (CMI), or abdominal angina, is a rare disorder accounting for less than 5% of all intestinal ischemic events, and in more than 90% of instances is caused by atherosclerosis. CMI has the potential to worsen and develop into acute intestinal ischemia with bowel infarction. Therefore, treatment of symptomatic CMI is necessary to prevent acute mesenteric ischemia, which may cause bowel infarction and death. Until recently, open revascularization has been the method of choice for therapy of patients with CMI. However, the rate of major complications is relatively high. As an alternative to open surgical revascularization, PTA was introduced by Furrer et al in 1980. Since then, several studies have presented the results of angioplasty and/or stenting in the treatment of CMI, with a periprocedural mortality rate of 0 to 13%, and complication rate of 0 25%. The technical success rate of PTA is 90 100%.