| Technology | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Balloon angioplasty | Low cost | Variable patency rates, often lower in complex lesions (diffuse disease, calcified lesions) |
| Easy to use | Risk of dissection with acute or subacute vessel closure | |
| High procedural success rates in many lesions, often highest in focal lesions | ||
| Balloon expandable stents | Eliminate technical failure from PTA-induced dissections or suboptimal vessel expansion | Stent “failure” from thrombosis and restenosis |
| Can be positioned with great accuracy (advantage in ostial lesions) | Stent fractures, which cause restenosis, particularly in long lesions | |
| Good patency rates with short, focal lesions | Limited data on efficacy in infrapopliteal locations | |
| Self-expanding stents | Greater flexibility | Substantial rate of stent fracture (up to 24%) in some vessels (eg, the superficial femoral artery), which promotes restenosis and predisposes to late stent failure |
| “Shape memory” may be of benefit in arteries subjected to repeated external compression and those with diffuse disease | ||
| Newer generations are more fracture resistant and have shown improved patency rates compared with balloon-expandable stents | No data on efficacy in infrapopliteal locations | |
| Drug-eluting stents | Theoretical lower risk of restenosis | High cost |
| Have not shown clinical superiority over bare metal stents in lower extremity interventions | ||
| Stent grafts | Modest improvement in patency over nitinol self-expanding stents | Higher rates of thrombosis and embolisation following implantation |
| Layer of PTFE prevents intimal hyperplasia from encroaching upon the vessel lumen | ||
| Subintimal angioplasty | Low cost | Difficulty in establishing re-entry |
| Excimer laser | Ability to break molecular bonds directly by photochemical rather than thermal energy | Vessel perforation |
| Ability to ablate thrombus | ||
| Step-by-step recanalisation | ||
| Excisional atherectomy | Reduced barotraumas and plaque displacement | Embolic potential |
| Cutting balloon angioplasty | May limit dissection in heavily calcified vessels | Vessel perforation |
| High crossing profile | ||
| Cryoplasty | Limits vascular injury, elastic recoil and distal dissection | Dissection |
PTFE, polytetrafluoroethylene.