Drug-eluting stents effective for diabetic patients

Results of a multicenter study in Asia, demonstrating that drug-eluting stents are effective with a low rate of complications in diabetic patients, will be presented at the 21st annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium, sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF).

The study, "The Effect of Drug-Eluting Stents on Clinical and Angiographic Outcomes in Diabetic Patients: Multicenter Registry in Asia," compared the safety and efficacy of sirolimus (SES), paclitaxel (PES), zotarolimus ( ZES), biolimus A9 (BES) and everolimus-eluting (EES) stents on the outcome of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM).

The study will be presented as a poster abstract (TCT-363) on Tuesday, September 22 between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. in Hall D of The Moscone Center. Sunao Nakamura, MD, lead investigator for the study, will report on the results of the investigations. Dr. Nakamura is Vice President and Director of the Cardiovascular Center at New Tokyo Hospital as well as Clinical and Visiting Professor of Kumamoto University in Matsudo, Japan.

The investigation consisted of a prospective analysis of 1,373 patients with DM treated with different drug-eluting stents (508 SES, 420 PES, 204 ZES, 120 BES and 121 EES) in six high-volume Asian centers. The study endpoints were the incidence of MACE at 30 days, the restenosis rate at 9 months and target lesion revascularization (TLR) at 9 months.

The incidence of MACE with this study cohort was 0.8% in patients receiving SES, 1.2% in PES, 1.0% in ZES, 0.8% in BES and 0.0% in EES. The restenosis rate at 9 months was 7.9% for those receiving SES, 12.6% for PES, 16.2% for ZES, 5.0% for BES and 6.7% for EES. TLR at 9 months was 6.5% in patients receiving SES, 10.7% with PES, 13.7% with ZES, 5.0% with BES and 4.1% with EES.

The researchers concluded that the use of drug-eluting stents in patients with DM was safe with low acute complications. Further, patients treated with SES, BES and EES showed a lesser rate of restenosis when compared with other drug-eluting stents.