Case presentation: A 76-year-old man with rate-controlled atrial fibrillation (AF), diabetes mellitus, and prior stroke who is receiving warfarin to prevent recurrent stroke presents to the emergency department with chest pain, elevated serum troponin, and an ECG that demonstrates ST depression in the precordial leads. Cardiac catheterization reveals an ulcerated plaque and partially obstructiv...

Coronary artery aneurysm after coronary interventions are rare but variable (0.2%-1.7%) clinicopathological entity depending on whether a incidental or a routine 6 monthly angiographic follow up finding and is seen more common with drug eluting stents (DES) rather than bare metal stents (BMS). It is of three types and depending on the type and patient clinical response further strategy (conserv...

Primary percutaneus coronary intervention, performed in a timely manner, is currently the standard of care for patients with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Numerous clinical trials have shown the superiority of balloon angioplasty over thrombolytic therapy in decreasing the composite endpoint of death, reinfarction, and stroke in patients with STEMI [1]. Nonetheless, the effi...

BACKGROUND Stent thrombosis is a lethal complication of endovascular intervention. Concern has been raised about the inherent risk associated with specific stent designs and drug-eluting coatings, yet clinical and animal support is equivocal. METHODS AND RESULTS We examined whether drug-eluting coatings are inherently thrombogenic and if the response to these materials was determined to a gre...

INTRODUCTION Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) has become the treatment of choice in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Drug-eluting stents (DES) reduce restenosis compared to bare-metal stents (BMS) but there is conflicting data concerning their use in the setting of STEMI. We aimed to evaluate the influence of the type of stent on the outcomes of...

Drug eluting stents (DES) have been enthusiastically introduced into contemporary interventional cardiology practice. By delivering locally active doses of antiproliferative drugs, they have demonstrated an impressive capacity to inhibit restenosis caused by neointimal hyperplasia; a complication that has plagued uncoated “bare-metal” stents (BMS). DES coated with either paclitaxel or rapamycin...

BACKGROUND Although peri-strut low-intensity area (PLIA) is frequently observed on post-stenting optical coherence tomography (OCT) images, the histology associated with PLIA is undocumented. METHODS AND RESULTS The 36 porcine coronary lesions treated with bare-metal (BMS: n=16) or drug-eluting (DES: n=20) stents were assessed by OCT and histology at 28 days. DES showed a significantly higher...

BACKGROUND Published rates of coronary restenosis have fallen below 10% in drug-eluting stent trials. Early evaluations of new stents have used continuous end points that are presumed surrogates for restenosis, but the generalizability and power of such end points have not been examined systematically. METHODS AND RESULTS We examined the relationship between incremental changes in observed la...

Background—Published rates of coronary restenosis have fallen below 10% in drug-eluting stent trials. Early evaluations of new stents have used continuous end points that are presumed surrogates for restenosis, but the generalizability and power of such end points have not been examined systematically. Methods and Results—We examined the relationship between incremental changes in observed late...