Drug-coated heart stents save more cardiac victims, study finds

"Drug-coated stents cut death rates for heart attack victims by 16 percent over older, bare-metal versions, researchers said, offering fresh evidence for the safety of the next generation of the devices. Sales of drug-covered stents, the mesh metal tubes used to prop open clogged arteries, fell 30 percent last year amid concerns their coatings could cause fatal clots. The results suggest there's less to fear from the new stents in patients who've already had heart attacks, said Laura Mauri, the lead author of the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. About 1.1 million Americans suffer heart attacks each year and half die, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Of the 1 million stents implanted in U.S. patients annually, about half are used for heart attack victims. The new stents are coated with a drug intended to prevent scar tissue from reclogging arteries and patients who get them usually take anti-clotting medicine, which also might improve survival, Mauri said" - Bloomberg