[The indications for rotation angioplasty of the a. femoralis superficialis and the a. poplitea. The treatment results in 75 complicated chronic arterial vascular occlusions].

75 patients with difficult occlusions in the superficial and popliteal arteries were treated by the "Rotacs" system. This technique is efficient in treating occlusions longer than 10 cm, with an initial success rate of 60.5%. In primary failed conventional angioplasties Rotacs-PTA was successfully employed in 56% as a second intervention. This is considered to be an advance in PTA technique. In stage II disease the PTA results are better than in diseases of the stages III and IV, which agrees with conventional catheter treatment. In the femoropopliteal overlapping segment the initial successful PTA of short, hard, mostly calcified occlusions was only 33%. The complication rate of Rotacs technique compares with that of the conventional methods.