Effects of duplex surveillance on angioplasty patient outcomes.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessing the effectiveness of a duplex surveillance protocol on improving patient outcomes following endovascular revascularisation for lower extremity peripheral vascular disease.
IRAS ID
248736
Contact name
Joseph Sathianathan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
NHS Dumfries and Galloway
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 17 days
Research summary
Peripheral vascular disease (PVD) is a result of narrowing or blockage of the main blood vessels which provide blood to the limbs, or peripheries, of the body. This restricts the amount of blood that can reach these areas and, in the legs, this can cause muscle pain at rest or when walking, skin ulceration and infection, and in severe cases can require an amputation. One way PVD can be treated is by inserting a wire into the affected blood vessel and inflating a small balloon in the area of disease to flatten it, allowing more blood to get through. A small mesh cylinder known as a stent may also be inserted to hold the vessel open. This operation is known as endovascular revascularisation.
Although this treatment may be effective in the short term, over time the vessel can re-narrow and symptoms can re-occur. In this case, further intervention can be offered. However, previous research has shown that often the vessel can re-narrow or re-block in the treated area before the symptoms come back. Therefore, an ultrasound based imaging technique known as duplex, which is able to look at the blood flow in the treated vessels, can be used to monitor the treatment and identify when the vessel begins to narrow again so that further treatment can be offered at an earlier stage.
Follow up using this duplex scanning requires the patient to attend for regular appointments at the hospital and can be quite time-consuming for both the patient and the vascular department. Therefore it is important that we know that it is worth the time and effort to perform these follow up scans by showing that it improves the long-term success of the treatment, and this is what this research aims to show.
REC name
South Central - Oxford A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/SC/0643
Date of REC Opinion
22 Nov 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion