Drug eluting stents: To evolve or dissolve?

Drug-eluting stents.

New Drug-Eluting Stents

The introduction of drug-eluting stents (DES) has rapidly and profoundly affected the field of interventional cardiology, and DESs are now used in a majority of intracoronary stenting procedures. As a result of the innumerable “trial-and-error” endeavors, DESs have emerged as a potential solution for solving the problem of restenosis. DESs are coated stents capable of releasing single or multip...

Drug-Eluting Stents

n the history of percutaneous coronary intervention, drug-eluting stents (DES) are recognized as revolutionary technologies with their unique ability to provide both mechanical and biological solutions simultaneously to the target lesion. While the clinical success of DES depends on these 2 properties, the ability of the operator to properly deploy the device is also of utmost importance. Altho...

Drug-eluting/biodegradable stents.

Drug-eluting stents.

In their recent systematic review, Suzanne Ligthart and associates compared analyses of the cost-effectiveness of drug-eluting stents. They found that in most studies in which an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio greater than $50 000 per quality-adjusted life-year was calculated the study authors recommended against the widespread use of drug-eluting stents. However, we believe that previous...