Patients with acute iliofemoral deep vein thrombosis (DVT) suffer the most severe postthrombotic sequelae. The majority of physicians treat all patients with acute DVT with anticoagulation alone, despite evidence that postthrombotic chronic venous insufficiency, leg ulceration, and venous claudication are common in patients treated only with anticoagulation. The body of evidence to date in patients with iliofemoral DVT suggests that a strategy of thrombus removal offers these patients the best long-term outcome. Unfortunately, currently published guidelines use outdated experiences to recommend against the use of techniques designed to remove thrombus, ignoring recent clinical studies showing significant benefit in patients who have thrombus eliminated. Contemporary venous thrombectomy, intrathrombus catheter-directed thrombolysis, and pharmacomechanical thrombolysis are all options that can be offered to successfully remove venous thrombus with increasing safety. The authors review evidence supporting the rationale for thrombus removal and discuss the most effective approaches for treating patients with acute iliofemoral DVT.

EVAR and open repair are comparable in safety and efficacy in octogenarians. Operative repair outcomes remain acceptable. Mid- and long-term survival are similar, indicating no survival advantage of one procedure compared with the other.

Our study indicates that early recanalization with MT followed by emergent CEA is safe and feasible, which suggests that both CAS and CEA should be considered in the emergent treatment of patients with tandem occlusion.

Reintervention was more common with EVAR and occurred later. Early reintervention after OSR is associated with significant mortality. If early reintervention in OSR patients can be avoided, there is no early survival advantage to EVAR. Current endografts require fewer reinterventions than earlier devices.