Kissing balloon inflation in percutaneous coronary interventions.

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.