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 ...

Percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) are standard therapy for the treatment of atherosclerotic lesions of the coronary arteries. Since the introduction of rotational atherectomy (RA) in 1989, it has become established as a necessary adjunct to PCI in a small proportion of cases, notably calcified lesions. However, its use is hampered by the recurrent phenomenon of restenosis. The introduc...

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...

The root cause of coronary artery disease is atherosclerosis, ie, intraluminal narrowing (stenosis) of the arteries that supply blood to tissues of the heart. The introduction of the drug-eluting stent over the past decade has revolutionized the field of interventional cardiology. It is used extensively in clinical practice for the treatment of coronary artery disease. The first drug-eluting st...

BACKGROUND The long-term safety and efficacy of drug-eluting coronary stents have been questioned. METHODS We evaluated 47,967 patients in Sweden who received a coronary stent and were entered into the Swedish Coronary Angiography and Angioplasty Registry between 2003 and 2006 and for whom complete follow-up data were available for 1 to 5 years (mean, 2.7). In the primary analysis, we compare...

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...

BACKGROUND The safety of drug-eluting stents has been called into question by recent reports of increased stent thrombosis, myocardial infarction, and death. Such studies have been inconclusive because of their insufficient size, the use of historical controls, a limited duration of follow-up, and a lack of access to original source data. METHODS We performed a pooled analysis of data from fo...

The safety and efficacy of coronary stents, utilized for treatment of ischemic heart disease, have been evaluated extensively. In comparison with bare-metal stents, first-generation drug-eluting stents more than halved the need for target lesion revascularization, but long-term safety has been questioned, as the first-generation drug-eluting stents seem to be associated with a small, but increa...