Boston Scientific Corp. said fourth-quarter sales of its Taxus drug-coated stent fell nearly 12 percent from the previous quarter, but the medical device maker expects the slumping stent market to rebound from recent safety worries.

Last year, Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific together sold more than one million drug-coated stents. They have become a primary treatment for the number one cause of death in the United States – heart disease. (Read More About Overuse of Heart Stents…)

Blogger Burt Cohen pokes 10 big holes in MSNBC’s recent report on teensy walking time bombs known as stents. Rule #1 – When you’re writing to people who have weak coronary arteries you might not want to start out with, “Millions of Americans could be walking around with tiny time bombs in their hearts.”… (PTCA)

When stents were first introduced in the mid-90s, a researcher showed that the some of the suboptimal results being seen were to a large extent due to under-expansion of the stent devices in the arteries. Intravascular Ultrasound Imaging (IVUS) may better solve the problem of viewing the stent devices in the arteries to make sure they are expanding the artery properly in order to prevent thrombosis. (Source)

Atlanta-based CeloNova BioSciences today in October 2006 that it has a technological solution for the serious thrombosis problems facing drug-eluting stents. The solution is the patented, medically inert Polyzene(R)-F stent coating.
Polyzene(R)-F prevents thrombosis and promotes normal endothelial cell growth. Interventional physicians will soon be able to minimize restenosis without resorting to drug-eluting stents that can cause thromboses and heart attack.
Long term studies now suggest that a small number (2-6%) of these drug-eluting stents are associated with a rare but catastrophic risk for thrombosis. Nearly 50% of patients with a drug-eluting stent thrombosis die from the effects of the blood clot. This increased risk of blood clots and deaths is apparently caused by the drugs
interference with the normal blood vessel wall healing process in which new
endothelial cells grow over the site of the stent implant as the stent is
integrated into the structure of the artery. In contrast to this interference from drugs, in animal studies and human clinical trials, Polyzene(R)-F actually promoted healthy endothelial cell growth.
And, in contrast to the clot-inducing potential of bare metal stents, the
Polyzene(R)-F coating inhibits the adhesion and activation of coagulation factors that can produce clots.

A Cleveland Clinic study, published in the December issue of the American Journal of Medicine (AJM), concludes that drug-eluting stents are four to five times more likely than bare metal stents to induce a blood clot months or years after implantation. But, according to one of the article’s authors, the conclusions of the study do not warrant an abandonment of drug-eluting stents, because other studies have shown that bare metal stents have their own problems, which are not benign.

October 2006–A new report finds Boston Scientific Corp. and Johnson & Johnson are losing sales due to doctors’ concerns over the risks posed by drug-coated heart stents. The report from Bloomberg News cites research from consulting group Goodroe Healthcare Solutions that found drug-coated stents accounted for about 88 percent of U.S. stent sales through the second quarter of 2006 and then started declining after the studies became public. The drug-coated stents may be causing an additional 2,160 deaths worldwide each year, according to an editorial published Oct. 11 by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Drug coated stents are a $6 billion dollar a year boom to these device companies. (Biz Journals)