Stents may not be an effective method for relieving chest pain in heart patients, according to a study published in The Lancet.
While stents can save lives when used to open arteries in heart attack patients, they are most commonly used to open blocked arteries in patients who experience chest pain during moderate physical exertion. Hundreds of thousands of heart patients receive a stent for this condition every year, and these devices can cost hospitals as much as $41,000 per implantation, according to The New York Times.
To assess the efficacy of stents at relieving chest pain, researchers enrolled 200 patients with a blocked coronary artery who were experiencing chest pain severe enough to limit physical activity.
Physicians treated all participants with medications such as statins and aspirin for six weeks to reduce the risk of heart attack. Physicians then inserted a stent into 105 patients to open the blocked artery and administered a sham procedure to the other 95 patients. For the sham procedure, physicians inserted a catheter into either the wrist or groin of the patients as if they were inserting a stent, but instead simply removed the catheter with no stent insertion. When researchers examined participants six weeks later, both groups reported experiencing less pain and displayed improvement on treadmill tests.
While the study has sent a wave of uncertainty through the cardiology community regarding stents, with some calling for changes to cardiology guidelines, it's left others with unanswered questions, according to the Times.
David Maron, MD, a cardiologist at Stanford (Calif.) University who was not involved with the research, told the Times the study was well conducted, but said further clarification is needed regarding the use of stents for chest pain relief in areas not explored by the current study.
"We don't know if the conclusions apply to people with more severe disease," Dr. Maron told the Times. "And we don't know if the conclusions apply for a longer period of observation."
To read the full study, click here.
To the Times' full report on the study, click here.
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