State-of-the-Art Paper
Kissing Balloon Inflation in Percutaneous Coronary Interventions

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Bifurcation lesions are the most frequently approached complex coronary lesions in everyday interventional practice. Bifurcations complexity relies essentially on their very specific anatomy that is imperfectly handled by current coronary devices and, despite dedicated techniques and drug-eluting stents, percutaneous coronary interventions directed toward the treatment of bifurcations are technically demanding and require proper execution. Kissing balloon (KB) inflation was the first specific bifurcation technique to have been developed for percutaneous bifurcation interventions and continues to currently play an important role. Indeed, KB has been proposed to optimize stent apposition, improve side branch access while correcting stent deformation or distortion. Over the years, the KB technique has been deeply investigated by many different methods, from bench testing and computer simulations to in vivo intravascular imaging and clinical studies, producing a large amount of data pointing out the benefits and limitations of the technique. We sought to provide here a comprehensive overview of all those aspects.

Key Words

bench tests
bifurcations
functional assessment
imaging
kissing balloon

Abbreviations and Acronyms

CI
confidence interval
DES
drug-eluting stent(s)
FFR
fractional flow reserve
IVUS
intravascular ultrasound
KB
kissing balloon(s)
MV
main vessel
OCT
optical coherence tomography
SB
side branch(es)
TIMI
Thrombolysis In Myocardial Infarction
TLR
target lesion revascularization

Cited by (0)

Dr. Sgueglia has reported that he has no relationships relevant to the contents of this paper to disclose. Dr. Chevalier is a consultant for Abbott Vascular, Medtronic, and Terumo.