Safety Assessment of Femoropopliteal Endovascular Treatment With PAclitaxel-coated Devices (SAFE-PAD Study)

This is an observational retrospective cohort study using claims data to evaluate the long-term safety of paclitaxel-coated devices compared with non-drug coated devices for femoropopliteal artery revascularization, with median follow-up time for the population surpassing 5 years. A series of supplemental sensitivity analyses will be conducted to assess and mitigate the potential for unmeasured confounding and to determine the impact of repeat interventions and paclitaxel exposure on survival. Finally, sub-group analyses will be performed to investigate whether there is differential safety of paclitaxel-coated devices across different patient profiles.

Inclusion criteria

• All fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries who underwent femoropopliteal artery revascularization. Patients are allowed to undergo simultaneous revascularization of lesions outside this target vessel during the same procedure.
• All patients with ≥1 year of Medicare claims data prior to their index procedure.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients without 1 year of Medicare claims data prior to their index revascularization procedure.
• Patients that do not have both a carrier file charge and an institutional file charge on the date of an outpatient procedure. This removes procedures performed in certain clinical settings, such as office-based clinics, that do not submit the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) code needed to identify drug-coated devices.