New Treatment Option For People With Heart Disease (NAPSA)—Today, an estimated 13 million Americans have a condition called coronary artery dis- ease, in which the arteries sup- plying blood to the heart become hardened and narrow due to plaque buildup. But now there is good news. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approvedthefirst new drug-eluting stent in the U.S. since 2004. Called Endeavor, this new stent offers important safety advantages for patients being treated with angioplasty, a minimally invasive alternative to bypass surgery. WhatIs A Drug-Eluting Stent? Stents are tiny wire mesh cylinders often placed in an artery to provide a miniature scaffold for the newly opened vessel. They were developed to address a problem called “restenosis,” where arteries reclog after angioplasty and require a repeat procedure. First came the bare metal stent, which provides only mechanical support of the vessel. More recently, drug-eluting stents were introduced and have revolutionized the treatment of coronary artery disease. Coated with a drug that is delivered to the artery wall to prevent the excessive growth of new tissue, drug-eluting stents have been shown to reduce restenosis rates by more than 50 percent compared to bare-metal stents. FDA approves a new drug-eluting stent to treat coronary artery disease. Newly Approved By FDA But earlier types of drug-elut- ing stents were also linked to a rare but serious problem called “very-late stent thrombosis,” where potentially dangerous blood clots form around the stent a year or more after being implanted and can cause heart attack and death. To address this safety concern, the new Endeavor drug-eluting stent uses next-generation technology to produce rapid, complete and functional healing of the stent within the artery wall. In studies in thousands of patients, Endeavor was shown to provide the same benefits in preventing restenosis as other drug-eluting stents but with no confirmed cases of very-late stent thrombosis. The new stent was developed by Medtronic (NYSE: MDT). To learn more, visit www.endeavor stent.com.
