Boston Scientific welcomes DES study data

Boston Scientific has welcomed recently published data from a study comparing the use of drug-eluting stents (DES) and bare-metal stents (BMS). The study showed that use of DES resulted in significantly lower rates of heart attack, re-intervention and death compared to patients using BMS.

The study, published last week in the American Journal of Cardiology, was conducted by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and compared the clinical outcomes of 1,126 patients receiving BMS and 1,233 receiving DES.

Boston Scientific noted that the lower risk of death associated with DES held across all patient subgroups, with more pronounced benefits in those patients originally classified as higher-risk.

Paul LaViolette, chief operating officer of Boston Scientific, said: “This study is worthy of note because it shows a significant advantage for DES over BMS with lower rates of death and heart attack as well as lower rates of re-intervention.”

He stated that these results echoed those shown in the Taxus clinical programme and commented that the use of DES in real-world patients could provide even greater benefits.

In November 2006, Mr LaViolette commented that the Taxus stent data was particularly important as they concerned patients with a number of complexities, analogous to situations in a real-life context.