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...

Significant advancements in percutaneous treatment of coronary artery disease have been achieved with the introduction of bare metal stents. They have two major drawbacks: acute/subacute stent thrombosis, successfully managed with antiplatelet therapy immediately after stent implantation; and in-stent restenosis, prevention of which has been achieved with the development of drug-eluting stents....

Coronary artery stents revolutionized the practice of interventional cardiology after they were first introduced in the mid-1980s. Since then, there have been significant developments in their design, the most notable of which has been the introduction of drug-eluting stents. This paper reviews the benefits, risks, and current status of Food and Drug Administration-approved drug-eluting stents.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES Drug-eluting stents are useful for preventing restenosis, but the patho-physiological processes involved in the proliferative response after implantation are still not known in detail. The aim of this study is to compare the coronary vascular histomorphometry after implanting drug-eluting stents and bare metal stents in a swine model. METHODS Sixty stents were rand...

Stent fracture is an uncommon complication of drug-eluting stent implantation, but it has a clinical significance because of its potential association with adverse cardiac events such as in-stent restenosis, target lesion revascularization, and stent thrombosis. Multiple stent fractures account for a small proportion, but they may lead to more serious complications. Newer generation drug-elutin...