Providence, RI - Following two studies of patients who were treated with cardiac stents, physicians at Rhode Island Hospital continue to recommend drug-eluting stents (DES) as a safe and effective treatment.
David O. Williams, MD, director of Rhode Island Hospital's cardiovascular laboratory and interventional cardiology, is the national principle investigator of the DEScover study, a registry of 7,752 patients in 140 hospitals across the country who received a coronary intervention treatment (stent or percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI)) in 2005. The one-year follow-up of those patients indicates that DES are safe and effective. The results of this study were reported in the November 14 issue of Circulation.
Of the patients enrolled in the study, 7,420, or 96 percent, received at least one stent while the remaining 325 received angioplasty alone. Of those patients with stents, the results of the study show some differences in DES (6509 patients) versus bare metal stents (BMS" 397 patients) outcomes. At one-year of follow-up, death occurred in 5.9 percent of BMS patients and 3.1 percent of DES patients. The rate of myocardial infarction (MI) was 3.5 percent for BMS and 2.4 percent for DES. Stent thrombosis, or clotting of the stent, showed no significant difference between BMS and DES (0.8 percent versus 0.6 percent respectively). Importantly, the need for additional procedures such as a repeat PCI or bypass surgery was substantially less among DES patients.
Earlier this week at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association, Williams also presented findings of a second study, the Dynamic Registry, a National Institutes of Health supported clinical investigation comparing outcomes of another large group of DES- and BMS-treated patients. Williams, the chair of the steering committee for the study, reported that the data from this study coincides with the results of the DEScover and indicated no excess complications in pat
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Contact: Nancy Cawley
ncawley@lifespan.org
401-444-4039
Lifespan
17-Nov-2006