Drug-Eluting Stents Prove Mettle in Heart Attack Patients -- Drug-eluting stents are a safe and effective treatment for heart attack, provoking no increase in complications when compared to conventional stents ... Heart Attack Patients With Blockages in Bypass Grafts Face Poor Outlook -- The outlook is poor for patients who have coronary artery bypass graft surgery and later have a heart attack...

See the text below for details on both articles, or call 717-241-2470 or 717-422-1181 for copies of the articles themselves.

Drug-Eluting Stents Prove Mettle in Heart Attack Patients

Interventional Cardiologists and Patients Can Be Confident in New Treatment Choice

(BETHESDA, MD)--Drug-eluting stents are a safe and effective treatment for heart attack, provoking no increase in complications when compared to conventional stents and cutting the risk of arterial renarrowing by 90 percent. These are the findings of a new study published in the August 2005 issue of Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions: Journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions.

The study fills an important information gap in the treatment of high-risk patients. Until now, patients with heart attack, or myocardial infarction, have been excluded from studies of drug-eluting stents. Physicians often use drugs and devices that have been approved in one group of patients to extend treatment to a new group of patients, however.

"There is increasing use of drug-eluting stents as the primary treatment for acute myocardial infarction. We wanted to know whether it was safe," said Ron Waksman, M.D., associate director of cardiology at Washington Hospital Center in Washi
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Contact: Kathy Boyd David
jdavid62@juno.com
717-241-2470
Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions
13-Jul-2005