Drug-Coated Stents Found Safe, Superior to Bare Metal Stents

Drug-coated stents-- tiny mesh tubes that prop open blocked arteries and release medication to help keep the artery clear made headlines last year when clinical trials linked this type of stent to higher death rates.

But a new study finds drug-coated stents are safe and may even be superior to their unmedicated, bare metal cousins in preventing death and heart attacks.

What were able to show from our study is that there are no safety concerns, theres no increase in late death, and certainly there are fewer deaths associated with drug-eluting stents, rather than more. But there were no excess events far down the road to suggest that there are any safety issues at all.




Duke University Medical Center cardiologists followed more than a quarter of a million patients over age 65, most of whom received drug-coated stents.

They then compared these patients clinical outcomes to a smaller group who received regular, bare metal stents.

The results showed patients with drug-coated stents were about twenty-five percent less likely to die. These patients were also twenty-four percent less likely to have a heart attack than patients with bare metal stents.
The patients were evaluated for two and a half years.

The study findings may put to rest the controversy over the safety of drug-coated stents.

Most patients are not treated in the context of a randomized, control trials, theyre treated in the context of real world, community care and thats exactly the setting in which we did our study. That makes the results all the more powerful.

The study included a diverse cross-section of patients; men and women, African-Americans and whites, patients with diabetes and patients without. All of these groups experienced similar, positive outcomes.

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[buddywill50]

2and 1/2 years out is not very long and who paid for the study???