Angioplasty with drug-coated balloon catheters: the coming tide?

It seems extraordinary to say, but I can’t remember the last time I paid for goods or services with cash. If you had asked me five years ago whether I would have predicted that, the answer would have been a definitive no. One pandemic later and the introduction of universal contactless payment by card or smartphone, and the world is a very different place. Life, at times, moves forwards through disruption and revolution rather than iteration and evolution.

Looking forwards to five years in the future, might it be that we will have arrived at a point where we look back and think how strange it was that the default position for treating de novo coronary lesions requiring revascularisation was the implantation of permanent metallic stents? The current renewed enthusiasm for research and development in drug-coated balloon (DCB) angioplasty and the prospect of the availability of results from a number of well-designed, large-scale randomised clinical trials comparing the outcomes of...