OBJECTIVE To evaluate the intermediate-term outcomes of patients with unprotected left main coronary artery stenosis who were treated with percutaneous coronary intervention in Hong Kong. DESIGN Historical cohort. SETTING A regional hospital in Hong Kong. PATIENTS Patients with unprotected left main coronary artery disease undergoing stenting with bare-metal stents or drug-eluting stents ...

Drug-eluting stents reduce the occurrence of in-stent restenosis and the need for subsequent target vessel revascularization compared with bare-metal stents. However, the safety of drug-eluting stents has been called into question because of an apparent increase in late stent thrombosis, a frequently fatal event. A substantial body of research has focused on determining the magnitude of these c...

Moses JW, Leon MB, Popma JJ, et al. Sirolimus-eluting stents versus standard stents in patients with stenosis in a native coronary artery. N Engl J Med 2003;349:1315-23. Stone GW, Ellis SG, Cox DA, et al. A polymer-based, paclitaxel-eluting stent in patients with coronary artery disease. N Engl J Med 2004;350:221-31. Pfisterer M, Brunner-La Rocca HP, Buser PT, et al. Late clinical events after ...

We compared the efficacy and safety of drug-eluting stents with that of bare-metal stents in patients who experienced acute ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and underwent primary percutaneous coronary intervention. To do this, we performed a meta-analysis of 13 randomized controlled trials in which drug-eluting stents were compared with bare-metal stents in STEMI patients. The...

In-stent restenosis is the major drawback of percutaneous coronary interventions, occurring in 10-40% of the patients. Recently, new stents have emerged which are loaded with anti-inflammatory, anti-migratory, anti-proliferative or pro-healing drugs. These drugs are supposed to inhibit inflammation and neointimal growth and subsequently in-stent restenosis. In this review article the results of...

A synergistic impact of research in the fields of post-angioplasty restenosis, drug-eluting stents and vascular gene therapy over the past 15 years has shaped the concept of gene-eluting stents. Gene-eluting stents hold promise of overcoming some biological and technical problems inherent to drug-eluting stent technology. As the field of gene-eluting stents matures it becomes evident that all t...

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE The safety and efficacy of drug-eluting stents reduce the need for surgical revascularization. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether paclitaxel or rapamycin-eluting stent are effective in avoiding the need for coronary-artery bypass grafting. METHODS This was a systematic review of the literature using the methodology of the Cochrane Collaboration...

OBJECTIVE The risk of in-stent restenosis can be considerably reduced by stents eluting cytostatic compounds. We created a novel drug-eluting stent system that includes several new features in the rapidly evolving field of stent-based drug delivery. METHODS AND RESULTS The aim of the present study was the preclinical evaluation of a stent-coating system permitting individual, on-site coating ...

This meta-analysis combined the results of randomized clinical trials to compare the efficacy of drug-eluting stents with that of bare metal stents in percutaneous coronary interventions to ascertain which revascularization strategy is most safe and effective. The literature identified 13 published studies, and 8 were included in the main meta-analysis, thus allowing a meta-analysis on 3,860 pa...

The prospective multicenter German Drug-Eluting Stent (DES.DE) registry is an observational study to analyze and evaluate the therapeutic principle of the differential drug-eluting stents (sirolimus- and paclitaxel-eluting stents) and bare metal stents under real world conditions in the context of the German healthcare system. The baseline clinical and angiographic characteristics and follow-up...