Registry data from real-world practice with DES are showing consistently positive safety, efficacy data.

 According to reports presented atTCT 2007, DES have improved outcomes and done so safely, in some cases reducing mortality.

“It is encouraging that these data so consistently show safety and efficacy. The challenge will be synthesizing the data from so many different areas into information for clinical practice,” Gregg Stone, MD, Chairman of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, said during the session.

In addition to moderating, Stone presented landmark results of the TAXUS registry concerning the impact of longterm clopidogrel use on death, MI and stent thrombosis. The data do not support routinely extending thienopyridine treatment beyond one year in patients who were event-free after either treatment with DES or bare-metal stents in single, de novo lesions in native coronary arteries.

Tudor D. Vagaonescu, MD, a cardiologist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, presented MIDAS registry data on 11,118 patients who were treated with either a single baremetal stent (n = 5,399) or a single DES  (n = 5,719) in the years 2003 and 2004.

Vagaonescu concluded that the use of a single DES in the setting of AMI was associated with a significant reduction of two-year all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality when compared with the use of a single bare-metal stent.