Prof Abhiram Prasad, Professor of Interventional Cardiology at CVCSRI St George’s, University of London and Consultant Cardiologist at St George’s NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK, speaks with Cardio Debate & Radcliffe Cardiology about New Stents during the “Advances in the Pathogenesis and Management of Cardiovascular Disease” 2015 meeting, organised by the Cardiovascular Sciences Research Centre of St George’s University and held at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London, UK.

Transcript

Are bioresorbable stents an answer to restenosis and in-stent thrombosis?

That’s an excellent question, we’re just beginning to learn what the role of these stents would be in our practice. Bioresorbable stents, as their name implies, these are stents that would be absorbed over a period of about a year or two – very different to the metal stents that we currently use.

And these have been developed to overcome the fact that we leave permanent metallic stents in patients. So to answer to your question, you ask if they are the solution – I think it’s too early to know.

Just a few months ago the first randomized trial has been published – the so-called ABSORB-3 trial. This is a trial that randomized patients to standard stent, a state-of-the-art current stent, or one of these bioresorbable stents. And it showed that this bioresorbable stents are non-inferior.

In other words they are more or less equivalent to the current technology.
The trial followed patients for a relatively short period of time. And it will take more time before we know if these stents are better.

In Europe, certainly, we have had a lot more experience using these. And these stents seem to be useable and very effective. But exactly which patients would benefit the most, we still don’t know.

So I think it’s early days, they hold a lot of promise. But to say that they are the solution to re-stenosis, or thrombosis, we just don’t know yet.