Next-generation heart stent beats older device | Science | Re...

Stents are wire mesh tubes inserted into coronary arteries that have been cleared of blockages. Drug-releasing versions help prevent vessels from reclogging.

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A next-generation artery-opening device from Abbott Laboratories Inc worked as well or better than an older stent

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Patients using Abbott's device, the Xience drug-eluting stent, had far fewer heart attacks and heart-related deaths after one year, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Results of the company-funded study of 1,000 patients known as Spirit III pitted Abbott's Xience against Boston Scientific Corp's Taxus stent. Xience proved significantly better at preventing scar tissue from renarrowing treated vessels, a measure known as in-segment late loss.

It also worked as well as Taxus in reducing rates of target vessel failure, a measure of re-treatment needed either because the device did not work or because of heart attacks or death.

And it cut major adverse cardiac events -- including heart attacks and heart-related deaths -- by 42 percent after one year.

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