“Insuring” appropriate tibial endovascular procedures

Abstract

The authors of the article that accompanies this commentary1 provide a startling statistic. More than one-quarter of all peripheral endovascular procedures used to treat Medicare patients with claudication between 2017 and 2019 may have been unnecessary. They surveyed 59,930 Medicare patients who underwent peripheral vascular interventions for claudication and found that 16,594 (27.7%) underwent a tibial angioplasty, atherectomy, or stent. Even more unsettling is that 38.5% of these tibial procedures were performed in isolation without a concomitant proximal intervention.