Dissolving stent for heart arteries passes first large test
Doctors say a new type of heart stent that works like dissolving stitches, slowly going away after it has done its job, passed its first major test in a large study.
Doctors say a new type of heart stent that works like dissolving stitches, slowly going away after it has done its job, passed its first major test in a large study.
Stents are tiny mesh cages that keep blood vessels from reclogging after artery-opening procedures. They are used on about 850,000 people each year in the United States alone.
The ones available now in the U.S. are permanent metal implants. Abbott's Absorb stent, already sold in Europe, is made of a material that degrades over several years. It performed as well as but not better than a conventional stent for preventing reclogging in the one-year study.
Results were discussed Monday at a conference in San Francisco and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
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