The Scandinavian Propaten® Trial – 1-Year Patency of PTFE Vascular Prostheses with Heparin-Bonded Luminal Surfaces Compared to Ordinary Pure PTFE Vascular Prostheses – A Randomised Clinical Controlled Multi-centre Trial

ObjectiveTo compare 1-year potencies’ of heparin-bonded PTFE [(Hb-PTFE) (Propaten®)] grafts with those of ordinary polytetraflouroethylene (PTFE) grafts in a blinded, randomised, clinically controlled, multi-centre study.Materials and methodsEleven Scandinavian centres enrolled 569 patients with chronic functional or critical lower limb ischaemia who were scheduled to undergo femoro–femoral bypass or femoro–poplitaeal bypass. The patients were randomised 1:1 stratified by centre. Patency was assessed by duplex ultrasound scanning. A total of 546 patients (96%) completed the study with adequate follow-up.ResultsPerioperative bleeding was, on average, 370 ml with PTFE grafts and 399 ml with Heparin-bonded PTFE grafts (p = 0.32).Overall, primary patency after 1 year was 86.4% for Hb-PTFE grafts and 79.9% for PTFE grafts (OR = 0.627, 95% CI: 0.398; 0.989, p = 0.043). Secondary patency was 88% in Hb-PTFE grafts and 81% in PTFE grafts (OR = 0.569 (0.353; 0.917, p = 0.020)).Subgroup analyses revealed that significant reduction in risk (50%) was observed when Hb-PTFE was used for femoro–poplitaeal bypass (OR = 0.515 (0.281; 0.944, p = 0.030)), and a significant reduction in risk (50%) was observed with Hb-PTFE in cases with critical ischaemia (OR = 0.490 (0.249; 0.962, p = 0.036)).ConclusionThe Hb-PTFE graft significantly reduced the overall risk of primary graft failure by 37%. Risk reduction was 50% in femoro–poplitaeal bypass cases and in cases with critical ischaemia.