The long term patency rates of infrainguinal balloon angioplasty (PTA) vary largely in different studies. At 1 year, primary patency rates of 47% to 86%, at three years 27% to 69%, and at six years 23% to 36% are reported in the literature. Highly variable and mostly poor patency rates, between 22 to 64% at 6-12 months have been reported by using subintimal angioplasty for the treatment of femoral and femoropopliteal lesions. (Met et al. 2008) In the femoropopliteal region, highly variable 1-year primary patency rates between 22% and 81% with various stents have been reported (Matsi et al 1994, Sapoval et al 1992, Grimm et al 2001, Lugmayr et al 2002). In three randomised studies, although the primary success rate of stent placement was higher than that after balloon angioplasty alone, the long-term patency was not improved by using stents (Cejna et al 2001, Grimm 2001). A meta-analysis revealed similar patency rates after balloon dilation and stent implantation (34). The authors of the largest randomized multicenter comparison of femoropopliteal PTA and balloon expanded stent placement with 154 treated limbs summarised that the beneficial effect of stents is to rescue PTA failures (54). In one study three year primary patency rate of 76% was obtained after primary stenting of relatively short, less than 6 cm long lesions (Lugmayr et al 2002). However, midterm restenosis after long-segment femoropopliteal stenting remains a problem. In recent single-center observational study in which long segments (median length 16 cm) were covered by nitinol stent after initial failure of PTA, the primary patency was only 54% at one year. Stent in the femoropopliteal artery are exposed to unique long term stress in the form of repeated compression, flexion and torsion and it is probably the reason why recent studies have revealed stent fractures in up to 50% of nitinol stents 1 year after placement (Schneinert et al 2005) and in 19% of Wallstents a mean of 43 months after placement (Sclager et al 2005). The fractures seem to be associated with poorer patency and they are more common in longer stents.