Brachytherapy with iridium-192 HDR to prevent from restenosis in peripheral arteries

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Abstract
The use of stents does not appreciably improve restenosis (usually resulting from intimal hyperplasia) as compared to percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) alone. The development of small-caliber probes for afterloading therapy in the biliary tract allowed us to use these for therapy in the vascular system. Using a special 9 F catheter, exact measurement of the length of the stented vascular segment and of the insertion length of the afterloading probe could be reproducibly performed. We used a Nucletron (Micro) Selectron HDR planning system version 10.10 for exact calculation, monitoring, and control of the afterloading procedure. Our source was iridium 192 (10 Ci) with a diameter of 1.1 mm. The program controls and monitors the insertion and removal of the iridium probe from the source into the special catheter through to the tip, and monitors the irradiation duration. The exposure time was around 200 seconds for a surface dose of 12 Gy.