Next-generation heart stent beats older device

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A next-generation artery-opening device from Abbott Laboratories Inc worked as well or better than an older stent at keeping blood flowing through diseased arteries, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

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.

The device has already won the backing of a U.S. advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration and is expected to win U.S. marketing approval in June, joining Medtronic Inc's new drug-eluting stent, Endeavor, which won U.S. approval in February.

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

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.

"It looks like we are entering an era where we can have some safer and more effective drug-eluting stents," said Dr. Gregg Stone of Columbia University in New York, who led the study.  Continued...