New Heart Stent

• Next-generation heart stent beats older device | Science | Reuters – Annotated

  
  

  • Stents are wire mesh tubes inserted into coronary arteries that have been cleared of blockages. Drug-releasing versions help prevent vessels from reclogging.
  • A next-generation artery-opening device from Abbott Laboratories Inc . the Xience drug-eluting stent, worked as well or better than an older stent.
  • Patients using  the Xience drug-eluting stent, had far fewer heart attacks and heart-related deaths after one year, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

  • Results of the company-funded study of 1,000 patients proved thet Xience as significantly better at preventing scar tissue from renarrowing treated vessels, a measure known as in-segment late loss.

    It also worked as well as Taxus in reducing rates of target vessel failure, a measure of re-treatment needed either because the device did not work or because of heart attacks or death.

    And it cut major adverse cardiac events — including heart attacks and heart-related deaths — by 42 percent after one year.