Cardiovascular revascularization medicine : including molecular interventions
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Cardiovasc Revasc Med · Mar 2013
Are drug-eluting stents superior to bare metal stents when compared to coronary artery bypass surgery? Show me the data.
Recent randomized trials comparing coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) versus drug eluting stents (DES) observed better survival, survival free of myocardial infarction (MI) and free from death, MI and stroke in patients with 3-vessel disease and diabetics if they were treated with DES. In the past, when we used bare metal stent (BMS) and meta-analysis of randomized trials with BMS and CABG, patients with 3-vessel disease and those with diabetes at 5 years of follow up had similar incidence of death, MI and stroke with CABG and BMS. ⋯ The author in the article compared these recent results with the above meta-analysis and made an indirect comparison among DES, BMS and CABG. Reasons for these intriguing findings were discussed, and also a search for potential solutions was conducted.