• How does diabetes impact cardiovascular disease?
• What type of surgical intervention is best for diabetics with cardiovascular disease?
• Is there one surgery that is best for all?
• When should expensive drug-eluting stents be used?

These are just a few of the questions to be addressed by the Future Revascularization Evaluation in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus: Optimal Management of Multivessel Disease (FREEDOM) trial. This trial is being funded by a $25 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NHLBI) to Dr. Valentin Fuster MD, PhD, the Director of the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and of the Marie-Jose and Henry R. Kravis Cardiovascular Health Center of The Mount Sinai Medical Center.

"This new program will reach far beyond the confines of any single institution or study," Dr. Fuster. "Our findings, the consortium we are building and the registry we will create will serve as a foundation upon which numerous NIH funded studies will be based in the coming years. These studies will focus on the impact of cardiovascular disease in diabetics and the development of new approaches to management and treatment of both diseases."

Diabetes is an emerging epidemic in the US. There are currently 16 million confirmed cases and another 20 million patients are known to be at high risk. Eighty percent of all deaths among diabetic patients are due to coronary artery disease, compared to about 30% among non-diabetic patients. "It is imperative that we act now to understand the interrelationship of these diseases and to analyze the comparative benefits of the burgeoning number of treatment options," said Dr. Fuster.

The most widely used surgical treatments for coronary artery disease are Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG) and balloon angioplasty. Trials in the early 1990's indicated no difference in ben
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Contact: Debra Kaplan
debra.kaplan@mssm.edu
212-659-9045
The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
27-Apr-2004