Stent types studied
Heart disease patients 65 years and older who receive drug-eluting stents to prevent blockages are more likely to survive and less likely to suffer a heart attack than people fitted with non-medicated stents, according to a new study supported by Health and Human Services (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the American College of Cardiology’s National Cardiovascular Data Registry.
The comparative effectiveness study of 262,700 Medicare patients who received stents is the largest ever to compare drug-eluting stents with bare metal ones.
It was presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 58th Annual Scientific Session in Orlando, Florida.
A team of researchers from Duke University, AHRQ and Kaiser Permanente found that, compared with patients who received bare metal stents, those fitted with drug-eluting stents had an 18% better survival rate over the 30-month study period and were 16% less likely to suffer a heart attack.
HHS Food and Drug Administration approved two drug-eluting stents in 2003 and 2004, but then issued precautionary advisories in 2006 after receiving scattered reports of thrombosis and deaths.
Subsequent clinical trials and other studies produced conflicting results.
According to AHRQ’s Dr Art Sedrakyan, a co-author of the study, the better outcomes found for patients with drug-eluting stents may be at least partially explained because those patients are required to take blood-thinning drugs, such as clopidogrel, for a long time after their procedure.
Patients who receive bare metal stents are usually prescribed blood-thinner medications for a shorter period of time and may take them less often.
In addition, patients with drug-eluting stents may visit their doctors more often after hospital discharge and may receive prescriptions for drugs and therapies to lower their cholesterol levels and manage other heart conditions more often than patients who received bare metal stents.
