BACKGROUND Maintaining arterial duct patency by stent implantation may be advantageous in congenital heart disease management algorithms. Rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug that demonstrates antiproliferative properties and inhibits smooth muscle cell migration, may deter the intimal hyperplasia that occurs during spontaneous closure and after-stent implantation of the arterial duct. METHOD...

Since the earliest use of coronary stents for treating symptomatic coronary stenosis, maintaining patent arteries after treatment has remained an elusive goal. Although the first bare metal stents opened stenotic arteries, they injured the arterial wall. The buildup of intimal scar tissue caused restenosis, a frustrating problem for prevention or treatment. After a dozen years of research, howe...

L esions located at coronary artery bifurcations represent one of the challenging areas in interventional cardiology. The use of coronary stents has resulted in a higher angiographic success rate compared to balloon angioplasty. Angiographic restenosis rates nevertheless remain high for the various techniques that employ bare metal stents. Although the advent of drug-eluting stents (DES) holds ...

BACKGROUND Preclinical evaluation of the vascular response of drug-eluting stents is limited especially in the setting of diabetes mellitus preventing the evaluation of changes in drug-eluting stent design and eluted drugs after clinical use. METHODS AND RESULTS Cultured human aortic endothelial cells were used to assess the differences between sirolimus and its analog, everolimus, in the set...

BACKGROUND Evaluating novel therapies is challenging in the extremely elderly. Instrumental variable methods identify variables associated with treatment allocation to perform adjusted comparisons that may overcome limitations of more traditional approaches. METHODS AND RESULTS Among all patients aged ≥85 years undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention in nonfederal hospitals in Massachus...

BACKGROUND Since the introduction of stents in 1994, improved clinical results have boosted the development of coronary angioplasty in Chile. Drug eluting stents, that have a reduced rate of restenosis, are being increasingly used. AIM To assess the acute and long-term results of bare metal stent implantation. PATIENTS AND METHODS Acute and long-term clinical, procedural and angiographic re...

Background: Bare-metal stents are widely used in Chinese population with coronary artery disease. Many reports of predictors of in-stent restenosis (ISR) are available from trials mainly conducted in the Western population. However, predictors of ISR in Chinese population are rarely described. Methods: This study enrolled 609 patients who had procedural success of coronary stenting with bare-me...