European centres report promising Altura endograft experiences

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Four-year results of a clinical trial experience of 90 endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) patients treated with the Altura endograft system (Lombard Medical) were presented at the 2018 VEITHsymposium (13–17 November, New York, USA) by Dainis Krievins of the Pauls Stradins Clinical University Hospital in Riga, Latvia. The trial included the first-in-human implants, with the majority of recent cases performed using the commercial version of the graft.

The trial pooled 90 patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms, enrolled between 2011 and 2015. Patient demographics and anatomy were “typical for EVAR”, Krievins said, in terms of aneurysm size, neck length, and angulation. Patients were followed up with CT and clinical evaluation at 30 days, six months, and annually post-implant for up to five years (mean follow-up time in this report was 2.7 years). The CT images were evaluated by a core lab.

“We are all familiar with the complexities of EVAR which include complex aortic and iliac anatomies which frequently require complex devices to resolve them”, Krievins said. “Gate cannulation, snaring and polymer handling can lead to complex procedures of unpredictable duration. This can make planning surgical lists around EVAR cases inefficient, impacting through and the overall costs of the procedure. The Altura stent-graft was designed to make EVAR cases a little simpler for physicians and to give better predictability for the duration of the case.”

Krievins explained Altura uses materials such as nitinol and polyester fabric to create “a very differentiated stent graft construct in the form of kissing D endografts. These grafts are repositionable during deployment, do not involve gate cannulation and their 14F delivery systems all permit injection of contrast.”

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