Four Analyses of Three-Year Clinical Data Suggest CYPHER(R) Sirolimus-Eluting Coronary Stent May Provide Alternative to Surgery for Patients with Multivess...( VIENNA Austria Sept. 5 /- Four an...),Health

VIENNA, Austria, Sept. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Four analyses of three-year follow-up data showed that the CYPHER(R) Sirolimus-eluting Coronary Stent may be considered an appropriate alternative to bypass surgery in patients with blockages in two or more coronary arteries (multivessel disease). The analyses were presented this week at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2007 (ESC Congress 2007).

Three of these analyses sought to assess the long-term impact of the CYPHER(R) Stent when the patient with multivessel disease was also diabetic, the length of the blockage was more than 100 mm or the arterial blockage was located in a junction between a main artery and a side-branch artery, a type of blockage also known as bifurcation. A fourth analysis reported the overall incidence of stent thrombosis in the data set using the Academic Research Consortium (ARC) definitions.

These analyses based their results on data from the Arterial Revascularization Therapy Study I and II (ARTS I and II Studies). The ARTS I Study was conducted in 1997 and compared the results of a bare metal stent to those obtained with bypass surgery. The ARTS II Study included 607 patients from 45 European centers treated with the CYPHER(R) Stent. Investigators compared the findings for these patients to those from the ARTS I Study, which included 605 patients treated with bypass surgery and 600 treated with a bare metal stent.

"These analyses contribute significantly to medical understanding of clinical outcomes for the CYPHER(R) Stent in patients with multivessel disease, who remain one of the most complex patient populations with coronary artery disease to treat," said Principal Investigator Patrick W. Serruys, M.D., Ph.D., from Thoraxcenter, Erasmus Medical Center in The Netherlands, who presented one of the analyses at the congress.

In the subgroup analysis of diabetic patients (367 patients or 20 percent of the total ARTS I and II patient populations), clinical in
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