Clinical Study Fully Covered Metallic Stents for the Treatment of Benign Airway Stenosis Caroline Dahlqvist, 1 Sebahat Ocak, 1 Maximilien Gourdin, 2 Anne Sophie Dincq, 2 Laurie Putz, 2 and Jean-Paul d’Odémont 1 1 Division of Pulmonology, CHU UCL Namur (Godinne Site), Universit´ e catholique de Louvain (UcL), Yvoir, Namur, Belgium 2 Department of Anaesthesiology, CHU UCL Namur (Godinne Site), Universit´ e catholique de Louvain (UcL), Yvoir, Namur, Belgium Correspondence should be addressed to Caroline Dahlqvist; caroline.dahlqvist@uclouvain.be Received 9 February 2016; Revised 22 August 2016; Accepted 23 August 2016 Academic Editor: Alberto Ruano-Ravina Copyright © 2016 Caroline Dahlqvist et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction. We herein report our experience with new fully covered self-expanding metallic stents in the setting of inoperable recurrent benign tracheobronchial stenosis. Methods. Between May 2010 and July 2014, 21 Micro-Tech5 FC-SEMS (Nanjing Co., Republic of Korea) were placed in our hospital in 16 patients for inoperable, recurrent (afer dilatation), and symptomatic benign airway stenosis. Teir medical fles were retrospectively reviewed in December 2014, with focus on stent’s tolerance and durability data. Results. Twenty-one stents were inserted: 13 for posttransplant lef main bronchus anastomotic stricture, seven for postintubation tracheal stenosis, and one for postlobectomy anastomotic stricture. Positioning was easy for all of them. Stents were in place for a mean duration of 282 days. Te most common complications were granulation tissue development (35%), migration (30%), and sputum retention (15%). Fify-fve % of the stents (11/20) had to be removed because of various complications, without difculty for all of them. None of the patients had life-threatening complications. Conclusion. Micro-Tech FC-SEMS were easy to position and to remove. While the rate of complications requiring stent removal was signifcant, no life-threatening complication occurred. Further studies are needed to better defne their efcacy and safety in the treatment of benign airway disease. 1. Introduction If surgery is usually considered as the frst option for the treat- ment of a complex or recurrent benign tracheal stenosis [1], it is not always applicable because of the stenosis’ extension and/or important comorbidities. In these cases, the use of an airway stent can ofer good palliation. Unfortunately, none of the currently available stents are ideal. Silicone stents require a rigid bronchoscopy procedure for positioning and can have complications such as migration, development of granulation tissue, or sputum retention [2, 3]. Self-expandable metallic stents are easy to position (even with a fexible bronchoscope) and are less prone to migrate. However, they can also be obstructed by secretions, tumor overgrowth, or granulation tissue [4, 5]. Stent fractures have also been described [6]. When required, the removal of these metallic stents can be difcult [7, 8]. In 2005, in view of the high number of complications reported with metallic stents, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published an advisory on their use in benign airway lesions [9, 10]. Fully covered self-expandable metallic stents (FC-SEMS) have been developed in an efort to combine the advantages of metallic self-expanding stents with those of complete polymer coverage. Tere are only limited data on the use of FC-SEMS for the treatment of airway disease [11–16]. Widely diferent results have been published, which made it impossible to draw any defnitive conclusion about this new variety of metallic stents, especially about their safety. Te aim of this retrospective study is to assess the tolerance and the durability of Micro-Tech FC-SEMS (Nanjing Co., Korea) for the treatment of inoperable and recurrent symptomatic tracheobronchial benign stenosis. Hindawi Publishing Corporation Canadian Respiratory Journal Volume 2016, Article ID 8085216, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/8085216