Expensive, newer stents not better for all: study

The new findings are an example of ways technology gets overused and at times misused in healthcare, according to a commentary accompanying the study.

Along with being more costly, so-called drug-eluting stents require patients to take aspirin and other blood-thinning drugs for a longer period of time after their procedure. That may require them to put off future elective surgeries because of bleeding risks, according to one researcher who worked on the report produced by Dr Robert Yeh and colleagues.

Some patients having a stent inserted are at high risk of having that stent get clogged, requiring a repeat procedure. They include people with diabetes or narrow arteries, for whom drug-eluting stents can help prevent build-up in and around the stent and avoid the need for future surgeries, said Yeh, a cardiologist from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Such stents release a drug to help prevent the artery becoming blocked.

But in people whose stents probably won't get clogged, the older bare-metal stents can work just as well at a much lower price, he said.

"Non-diabetic patients who have big arteries and have very short blockages, their rate of restenosis can be quite low, even with bare-metal stents," Yeh told Reuters Health.

"Patients need to ideally know an estimate of their individualized risk of requiring a repeat procedure, and they need to know, what are the implications of the different stent choices they might receive?"

Medtronic , Abbott Laboratories