Super-Thin Drug-Free Coating 'Hides' Stent as It Unblocks Hear... (entsreceived the new surface-treated ste...)

Super-Thin Drug-Free Coating 'Hides' Stent as It Unblocks Heart Arteries

Date:1/21/2008

ents received the new surface-treated stent to open up blockages in their coronary arteries, and six-month follow-up information is available for 40 patients. Six months after implantation, the patients were studied using angiography and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). To date, none of the stents has developed thrombosis and the binary restenosis rate is below 10 percent.

An independent laboratory also used a diagnostic test called optical coherence tomography (OCT), which images the vessels at the cellular level. Performed at the time of the initial procedure and six months after implantation of the coated stent in 15 people (27 percent), OCT results suggest that the Polyzene-F promotes healing, rather than prompting scarring.

Blocked heart arteries have long been treated through open-heart surgery by bypassing the blockage with a new conduit (coronary artery bypass surgery). Minimally invasive repair of blocked arteries in the heart and elsewhere in the body began more than 25 years ago with the advent of angioplasty. Angioplasty involves making a nick in the groin and advancing a thin tube, or catheter, through the artery to the site of the blockage and inflating a tiny balloon to open up the vessel. It was much less invasive than surgery; however, in about half the cases, the artery would reclog, according to studies. In the mid-1990s, doctors began inserting a tiny metal cage, or stent, to keep the artery propped open, and the restenosis rate dropped to about 30 percent, studies found. Four years ago, doctors began using drug-eluting stents, devices coated with a chemotherapeutic agent, dropping restenosis rates to as low as 5 percent to 7 percent in some cases, according to studies.

It has since been discovered that potentially deadly clots that can form inside the drug-eluting stent, which researchers estimate kill 1,000 or more people every year. To combat the blood-clotting problem, medical experts recommend patients who receive drug-e
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