Predicting Restenosis

Predicting restenosis: bigger is better but not best.

The ability to accurately predict restenosis after angioplasty continues to be elusive, despite two decades of clinical and angiographic studies. Although these studies have shown that a number of clinical, procedural, and angiographic factors are related to recurrence of the stenosis, the overall predictive value of these factors remains low.1 Angiographic factors have been most extensively st...

Predicting the restenosis benefit of drug-eluting versus bare metal stents in percutaneous coronary intervention.

BACKGROUND Drug-eluting stents (DES) for percutaneous coronary intervention decrease the risk of restenosis compared with bare metal stents. However, they are costlier, require prolonged dual antiplatelet therapy, and provide the most benefit in patients at highest risk for restenosis. To assist physicians in targeting DES use in patients at the highest risk for target vessel revascularization ...

Mitral restenosis.

Restenosis: delineating the numerous causes of drug-eluting stent restenosis.

In the past decade, tremendous progress has been made in reducing the incidence of restenosis with the advent of the drug-eluting stent (DES). With “plain old balloon angioplasty,” rates of acute and chronic vessel occlusion were unacceptably high at 30% to 60%, secondary to acute and chronic recoil and constrictive remodeling. The advent of bare-metal stents (BMS) appeared to eliminate the iss...

PTEN-uating restenosis.

Within the last few years, the lipid phosphatase PTEN has gained increasing attention.1 Initially described as a tumor suppressor gene, the function of PTEN meanwhile ranges from the regulation of the immune system to the recently established important function in neuronal growth.1,2 On a cellular level, PTEN interferes with cell proliferation, survival, and growth. These effects are not restri...