|
|
|
July
5,
2009 -- 4:30pm PDT
Stents: An Insider's Look
 I
recently talked at length with Dr.
Giulio Guagliumi of Bergamo,
Italy about his extensive work with one of the newest intravascular
imaging modalities that looks inside the coronary artery: Optical
Coherence Tomography, or OCT. He's been using the light-based technique
to examine implanted stents and determine whether or not healing
has occurred; that is, whether the stent struts have been covered
over by a layer of endothelial cells.
 Dr.
Guagliumi
reported results from the ODESSA
trial back
in October 2008; the study was one of the first to
look at strut coverage in drug-eluting stents (see photo at left). The
results were most interesting: of the four stent types studied, TAXUS,
CYPHER,
ENDEAVOR
and Bare Metal, only the ENDEAVOR showed virtually complete
coverage at six months, greater even than with the bare metal stent.
The implications
of such findings are very important in terms of the required duration
of antiplatelet therapy, design of new generations of
stents, and the factors that can result in late and very late stent
thrombosis.
Currently two main companies are developing this technology:
Volcano Corporation of San Diego, and LightLab, based in Massachusetts.
To learn more about the growth of this imaging technology, read my
exclusive interview with
Dr. Guagliumi.
|
|
|
