Studies give reassurance on DES long-term safety

Findings from two studies published this week provide further reassurance that the use of drug-eluting stents is not associated with increased long-term mortality compared to bare metal stents. The latest analysis from the Swedish Coronary Angiography and Angioplasty Registry (SCAAR) reports that of patients undergoing PCI over a four-year period, those who received a single DES showed similar rates of death, MI, and a composite of death or MI over a mean 2.7 years compared with those who had undergone PCI with a single bare-metal stent. However, the one-year rate of restenosis was significantly reduced in the DES group. The patients were a subgroup of those in an earlier SCAAR analysis, reported at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2007, which had seen significantly lower rates of MI and of death or MI with DES compared with bare-metal stents in >35 000 patients from the registry who received PCI over the same four-year period....