Abbott: Xience V drug eluting stent outperforms Taxus

Abbott has announced its Xience V everolimus eluting coronary stent system delivers clinically significant benefits to patients in comparison to the Taxus paclitaxel-eluting coronary stent system at two years.

The firm states a new meta-analysis, which included patients from Europe, Asia Pacific and the USA, demonstrated the superiority of Xience over Taxus in the endpoints of target vessel failure and major adverse cardiac events at 24 months.

According to the company, the results are being presented by Dr Gregg W Stone, the principal investigator of the Spirit III randomised clinical trial which made the findings, during the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics scientific symposium.

Commenting on the findings, Dr Stone said: “The pooled results from the Spirit II and Spirit III trials demonstrate that Xience V is safer and provides greater efficacy than Taxus at two years.”

He adds Xience V is a “true” second-generation stent, which results in enhanced outcomes for patients.

In recent days, Abbott announced the opening of a pilot plant facility and new development laboratories which will research technologies – and also test large-scale production of newly-developed drug formulations – in the German city of Ludwigshafen.