My Healthy Heart Blogs
Common Drug-Releasing Stents Have Similar Outcomes
02/04/08
Treatment Options
Between the first two commercial drug-releasing stents, there is little difference in outcomes like heart attack or death. A study reviewed the effectiveness of both stents.
A comparison of use of the first two commercially available drug-releasing coronary stents among patients in “everyday clinical practice” indicates no significant differences for outcomes such as heart attack or cardiac death, according to a study in the January 30 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.
Drug-releasing (eluting) stents are used for percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) to help reduce the rate of re-narrowing of a coronary artery, according to background information in the article. Approval of drug-eluting coronary stents was based on results of relatively small trials of selected patients; however, in routine practice, stents are used in a broader spectrum of patients.
Anders M. Galløe, M.D., of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues compared the efficiency and safety of sirolimus-eluting and paclitaxel-eluting stents in a study designed to reflect everyday clinical practice. The SORT OUT II trial included 2,098 men and women treated with PCI and randomized to receive either sirolimus-eluting or paclitaxel-eluting stents at five university hospitals in Denmark.
The researchers found that the proportion of patients experiencing major adverse cardiac events, like cardiac death, or heart attack, were about 9 percent for the sirolimus-eluting stent group and about 11 percent for the paclitaxel-eluting stent group. The stent thrombosis rates were 2.5 percent in the sirolimus-eluting stent group and 2.9 percent in the paclitaxel-eluting stent group.
“In conclusion, the SORT OUT II trial found no statistical significant differences in the primary or secondary end points between the sirolimus-eluting stent and paclitaxel-eluting stent in everyday clinical practice among patients," the authors wrote. "The rates of serious adverse events, cardiac death, acute myocardial infarction, and stent thrombosis were low, suggesting that, at least when considering 18 months of follow-up, the use of drug-eluting stents in the general population may be safe.”
Source:
JAMA January 2008
