Abstract

The addition of heat during balloon dilatation has been expected to solve the restenosis issue in balloon angioplasties, since collagen thermal degeneration in the media of vessel may suppress the elastic recoil. Various hot-balloon catheters have been developed to date, however, no catheter has been able to improve the chronic phase patency.¹ These catheters caused thermal damage to vessel surroundings, which should result in granulation-tissue growth to re-occlude the vessel. In order to suppress both the elastic recoil and granulation tissue growth, we developed a new laser hot-balloon catheter (LHC) system that is capable of rapid heating to minimize the heat injury to the vessel's surroundings We performed animal experiments to evaluate our system.

© 1995 Optical Society of America