Treatment with paclitaxel-based endovascular devices (PED) has become a common treatment option for patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) involving the femoral-popliteal artery. However, an aggregate level meta-analysis identified an association between the use of PED and increased all-cause mortality at both two and five-year follow-up intervals, though there are significant limitations of these analyses. Exploration of real-world data has been suggested as a means to further investigate the safety of PED. The current study explores the association of PED and mortality in real-world data using U.S. commercial claims from the FAIR Health data warehouse.~This study aims to evaluate the relative safety of paclitaxel used as an antiproliferative agent in the treatment of symptomatic PAD in a real-world scenario. We will analyze Paclitaxel Drug-Coated Balloons (DCB) and Paclitaxel Drug-Eluting Stents (DES), in aggregate and as unique exposures using propensity score-matched survival analysis. (Inverse probability of Treatment Weighting).~Commercial claims of patients who underwent endovascular interventional treatment of the femoral or popliteal arteries for symptomatic PAD between 1/1/15 and 12/31/2019 will form the study population. Three separate safety analyses will be performed. 1. Paclitaxel Drug coated balloons (DCB) as compared with propensity-matched patients treated with plain transluminal balloon angioplasty (PTA). 2. Paclitaxel delivering Drug-Eluting Stents (DES) as compared with propensity-matched cases using bare-metal stents (BMS). 3. Patients treated with either paclitaxel DCB or paclitaxel DES (any PTX) compared with propensity-matched controls (non-PTX,with DCB patients, matched to patients treated with PTA, and DES patients matched to patients treated with BMS).~All proposed analyses will be performed using R 4.01 implemented within the DELTA analytic engine. DELTA is an active surveillance safety system that can monitor clinical data repositories for safety signals and has been validated to support risk-adjusted prospective safety surveillance analyses of complex clinical datasets.
Treatment with paclitaxel-based endovascular devices (PED) has become a common treatment option for patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD) involving the femoral-popliteal artery. However, an aggregate level meta-analysis identified an association between the use of PED and increased all-cause mortality at both two and five-year follow-up intervals, though there are significant limitations of these analyses. Exploration of real-world data has been suggested as a means to further investigate the safety of PED. The current study explores the association of PED and mortality in real-world data using U.S. commercial claims from the FAIR Health data warehouse.