Drug-coated stents safe: Study
POSTED May 7, 2009 - 16:47 | POSTED BY Jyoti Pal
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on May 7, 2009 - 17:45
A study done in December 2006 had sent the use of drug-coated stents into a tailspin when the same team of researchers reported that patients treated with drug-coated stents were 18 percent more likely to die within three years.
But results of two separate trials confirm that the risk of death or heart attack is no greater among those who got drug-coated stents than those with bare-metal stents. Conversely, drug-coated heart stents appear to keep blood flowing to the heart muscle longer, thus lowering the need for a re-procedure, researchers report.
Swedish trial
47,967 patients who were fitted with stents between 2003 and 2006 took part in the trial. During the follow-up study, researchers found no increased risk of death or heart attack among those filled with drug-coated stents as against bare-metal stents.
Conversely, drug-coated stents lowered the risk of re-stenosis, new blockage of the treated artery, by 74 percent, especially in high risk patients, as against similar risk patients fitted with bare metal stent faced.
American trial
The American trail included 3,006 people who were given stents after heart attacks. While 2,257 were fitted with drug-coated stents, 749 had received bare-metal stents.
Researchers observed a significant difference in the rate of re-stenosis - 10 percent in drug-coated group versus 22.9 percent in bare-metal group. However, the death rate and incidence of second cardiac attack was the same- 3.5 percent.
The findings appear in the May 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Use of stents
Used in angioplasty, a non-invasive technique in which the blocked arteries are mechanically expanded, stents are tightly folded balloons that are pushed into the blocked blood vessels.
The balloon’s movement is monitored on the computer screen. Once the balloon reaches the clogged location it is inflated to a fixed size using water pressures some 75 to 500 times the normal blood pressure, making the stent, a tiny wire-mesh tube, drug-coated or bare-metal, prop the artery open.
Drug coated stents release medicines that prevent scar tissue from re-growth, a common problem with bare-metal stents.
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