News Focus
News Focus
icon url

DewDiligence

10/12/15 7:20 PM

#195911 RE: jbog #195910

ABT—I had a stent many years ago and I think I was on Plavix less than 18 months.

With permanent drug-eluting stents such as Xience, no one really knows how long a patient should be on an antiplatelet med such as Plavix; surely, the safest decision is to take such a drug for the rest of the patient’s life. Although the risk of stent thrombosis is small in the out years, it’s not zero; if late stent thrombosis does occur, there’s a significant chance that it will be fatal.

With ABSORB, on the other hand, there is nothing to test vis-à-vis the risk of late stent thrombosis; by definition, it can’t happen once the stent is gone.