A comprehensive study on venous endovascular management and stenting in deep veins occlusion and stenosis: A review study

Background

Patients with deep venous disease can be classified into two distinct categories: those with disease resulting from known deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which may subsequently lead to post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS), and those with disease caused by compressive factors or non-thrombotic iliac vein lesions (NIVL). The major factor causing the symptoms in patients with PTS and NIVL is venous hypertension which happens due to venous stenosis or venous obstruction. Nowadays Venous stenting offers a noninvasive approach for treatment of NIVL and PTS demonstrating high patency rate.

Methods

We comprehensively reviewed relevant published papers from 2008 to 2023 that surveyed various influencing factors including the site of occlusion and etiology of occlusions, proper diagnostic imaging, ideal characteristics of venous stents, different dedicated venous stents, pre-operative, concomitant, and post-operative interventions and factors that challenge stenting in both PTS and NIVL patients. The papers were identified by searching the keywords “venous stenting”, “PTS”, “NIVL”, “occlusion”, and “stenosis” in PubMed central library MEDLINE and Google Scholar.

Results

Patency rates, post-stent complications, and relevant data according to the patient's quality of life were included and analyzed from 476 identified studies. There is no validated protocol and guideline for using stents in patients with PTS and NIVL.

Conclusion

As there is no validated protocol and guideline for using stents in patients with PTS and NIVL, our study may provide comprehensive information to assist researchers interested in writing the protocol and give them insight.