In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, HCP Professor Sharon-Lise Normand, PhD, and colleagues reported on results of their study of adults who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with stenting for a heart attack (acute myocardial infarction). The lead author, Laura Mauri, MD, cardiac interventionalist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and HCP researchers Treacy Silbaugh, Robert Wolf, Katya Zelevinsky, and Ann Lovett, studied the outcomes of 7217 patients, 4016 of whom were treated with drug-eluting stents and 3201 with bare-metal stents. Outcomes from the patients were obtained from the Massachusetts Data Analysis Center (Mass-DAC) database, of which Normand is director.

The study’s findings revealed that the patients who were treated with drug-eluting stents were more likely to have a lower two-year mortality rate and a decreased need for repeat revascularization compared with those treated with bare-metal stents. The researchers concluded that “the observation of a reduction in mortality rates with drug-eluting stents was unanticipated and merits confirmation in randomized trials.”

This study was widely covered in the media, including by the Boston Globe, Bloomberg News, theheart.org, Los Angeles Times, WebMD, medpagetoday.com, and US News & World Report.