Biotech Values

[croumagnon]

Re: Late Thrombosis Takes Off When Stent Patients Stop Plavix

I attended a dinner with a group of Cardiologists last week and we were talking about bare-metal stents Vs the Cypher stent and the latest litterature relating to Plavix and Cypher. All the cardiologists there were adament about the fact that they still much prefer the Cypher stent because the majority of problems with stents occur in the first 6 months, where the bare metal stents are quite inferior to the Cypher stent. They all felt that the difference in the rate of Thrombosis long term between the two was not appreciable enough to justify not using Cypher in most cases. Additionally, they felt that many of the pateients that are candidates for stents have other arteriosclerosis problems (PAD, etc...) and that taking Plavix long-term was generally advisable for that group of patients anyway...

As a side note, apparently by doing an angiogram a year or so after placing a stent, the Cardiac surgeon can tell whether or not a given stent has already been covered by the endothelial tissue of the patient or not, and this way they can tell which patient needs to stay on Plavix and which can discontinue. I guess the reason this is not done is because of the added screening risk and the prohibitive expense if done on all patients with a stent...