Johnson and Johnson present study showing benefits of DES

Johnson & Johnson company Cordis Corporation has presented data showing that the introduction of drug-eluting stents (DES) can reduce health care costs while also bringing improved clinical outcomes.

The study results were presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics 2007 conference where it was shown that the post-DES era outperformed the pre-DES era.

Senior author of this study David J Cohen confirmed: “These results suggest that medical innovation, like the development and introduction of drug-eluting stents, can have value by contributing to improved clinical outcomes and reduced overall health care costs.”

Data from the Medicare Standard Analytic File was analysed and the year 2001 was chosen for the pre-DES era and 2004 for the post-DES era.

The main objective of the study was to assess the impact of the introduction of drug-eluting stents on overall coronary revascularization rates as well as examining treatment patterns among the Medicare population whose data was recorded.

It was found that there were significant improvements in most clinical outcomes with the post-DES era, including reductions in rates of risk-adjusted mortality by 12 per cent and heart attacks (myocardial infarction) by 29 per cent

Earlier this month Cordis demonstrated that its Cypher Sirolimus-Eluting Coronary Stent outperforms the Taxus Stent when used in small coronary vessels.