Newest Coated Stent Does Well in Real-World Trial

HealthDay, June, 2009 by Ed Edelson, HealthDay Reporter

The newest drug-coated stent has performed well in a real-life trial, Dutch cardiologists report.

a flexible metal-mesh tube coated with the drug everolimus -- is inserted to keep blood flowing after artery-opening procedures such as angioplasty, and is already in widespread use. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last July, on the basis of good results in controlled trials.

But those trials included only people with simple artery blockages and the effectiveness of the new stent in "complex, unselected patients treated in daily practice still remains unknown and cannot be extrapolated from these randomized controlled trials," said cardiologists at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam in their report, which was released online June 17 in advance of...

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