Stents: The Medgadget Divas

Stents have been in the news quite a bit lately. It has been a little confusing even for this medgadgeteer, so we thought we’d summarize the recent stent-news and point you toward some trustworthy sources.
News-Buzz 1: Drug-Eluting Stents carry a higher risk of thrombosis than Bare-Metal Stents (but lower restenosis)
The lowdown: Drug-eluting stents cost about 3 times more than bare-metal stents, and they are used in more than 90% of angioplasty procedures, yet they have been showing a consistently increasing trend in clot-formation once patients come off anti-clotting medication. The reason that the problem was not caught before is that the frequency of these events is quite low, but since stents are in 6 million people worldwide the problem has become much more visible.
News-Buzz 2: Drug-Eluting Stents safer than Bare-Metal Stents in Diabetics
The scoop: Diabetic patients who received drug-eluting stents had less heart attacks and reclogging of their arteries than diabetic patients with bare-metal stents.
News-Buzz 3: Doctors are stenting too much!
The skinny: Physicians get paid about 800 dollars per PCI procedure (percutaneous cardiac intervention, a.k.a stenting). So why not just go crazy? A certain hospital in Ohio has been stenting at a rate four times the national problem, and brings forward the question, “Does there need to be a paradigm shift in the way physicians are paid?”
News-Buzz 4: Had a heart attack more than 12 hours ago? Stenting is not beneficial
The 411: Performing angioplasty while someone has been having a heart-attack can be a life and heart saving procedure. It has commonly been believed among physicians that there is still some benefit to opening up the occluded artery after the heart attack has passed. Apparently they were wrong. After 12 hours, angioplasty has been shown to have no benefit to either mortality or morbidity.
Keep tuned for more stent gossip!