After recently publishing an article about drug eluting stents (DES) and bare-metal stents (BMS) in acute myocardial infarction in the New England Journal of Medicine, HCP Professor Sharon-Lise Normand, PhD, and colleagues from the Massachusetts Data Analysis Center (Mass-DAC) didn’t wait long to publish again.

Normand and Mass-DAC colleagues published the article, "Drug-Eluting or Bare-Metal Stenting in Patients with Diabetes" in Circulation. With cardiologists Pallav Garg and Laura Mauri from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Mass-DAC team evaluated the long term safety of DES compared to BMS specifically in patients with diabetes from a contemporary US population. Rates of mortality, myocardial infarction (MI) and repeat revascularization procedures were ascertained over 3 years after stent placement. Sixty-six percent of patients with diabetes received DES compared with 34% who received BMS. In a matched sample of DES and BMS patients, the risk-adjusted mortality, MI, and target vessel revascularization rates at 3 years were lower in the diabetic patients treated with DES compared with BMS. The results of this large population-based study suggest that drug-eluting stents are safe and effective in patients with diabetes undergoing angioplasty with stenting in long-term follow-up.

The results from this study are widely respected and the team presented the study at the November 2008 American Heart Association meeting held in New Orleans. For more information see the American Heart Association’s website that includes the Mass-DAC team’s presentation on the article. Additionally, coverage on the article is available on CardioSource.com and The Heart Organization.org.