Are Different Stents Better for Different Vessels?

Wall Street Journal

Are Different Stents Better for Different Vessels?

More stent data out of Vienna: A doctor who autopsied 83 patients with drug-coated stents says the diameter of the artery to be treated makes all the difference. She recommends against using the devices in patients with small blood vessels, Dow Jones target

Yet the author, Renu Virmani of the CVPath Institute in Maryland, also says that “large vessels don’t need drug-coated stents” to reduce the risk of re-blockage.

Her study, described here, looked at U.S. patients who had received stents made by both Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific. Besides the issues specific to stents, she found the deviced had been imperfectly inserted in about 10% of the patients, and that about 5% of the patients had overlapping stents. She also noted that 10% of the patients had died of a heart attack.


ESC Congress 2007 Press Releases

DES: Friend or Foe?

Author: Renu Virmani, MD

One can conclude from these histologic studies that because of underlying atherosclerotic plaque morphology differences, variability in healing from patient to patient, and a hypersensitivity in some patients; DES technology may have to be tailored to individual patient characteristics, rather than one stent fits all.