Which stent platform do you think compresses more easily: Boston Scientific’s Element (top) or Medtronic’s Integrity (bottom)?
I first heard concerns about stent deformation, primarily seen in the PROMUS Element stent made by Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX), during a presentation at a small interventional meeting last summer. The issue was then reported in two journal articles, just prior to the TCT meeting in November, where it became a topic of much attention — although most interventional cardiologists felt that it was nothing like the problem of late stent thrombosis, first seen as a “rare” event in the first generation of drug-eluting stents five years ago. Continue reading
Forgive the perverse Shakespearean pun in the title but, as the Bard wrote: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” My topic is pretty much the polar opposite of roses, but the whole concept of labels and what we call things has become increasingly important. It’s one that I touched on in 
Call it an accordian, a concertina or a “squeezebox”…but don’t call it a stent. Because one thing that is not music to your ears is a coronary stent that you have carefully placed to relieve your patient’s symptoms — and which then gets shorter or longer when you push or pull another catheter, balloon or wire through it.
I’m working on at least six different articles about the many studies presented at the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans yesterday and today, from new stents to transradial vs. femoral access, etc. etc. etc. and suddenly all of this is swept aside by an email that arrived in my Inbox seconds ago, posting the following to the topic of 
Last week the Superior Court of Massachusetts entered a 
A lost story this past couple of weeks has been an “admission” by the American Heart Association that the number of angioplasties performed in the United States is actually half of what the AHA has been saying all these years.
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