Stents with specialized functions: drug-eluting stents and stents with antireflux devices

Meta-analysis comparing drug-eluting stents with bare metal stents.

We performed a meta-analysis of 10 randomized trials of 5,066 patients with 6 to 12 months of follow-up. The summary risk differences excluded any major differences between the 2 types of stents for death (0.12%, 95% confidence interval [CI] -0.34% to 0.58%, p = 0.60) and overall myocardial infarction (0.04%, 95% CI -0.72% to 0.81%, p = 0.91). There was a modest increase in the risk of Q-wave m...

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...

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...