Drug-Eluting Stents

Although coronary stenting improves angiographic and clinical outcome of patients with coronary stenosis compared to balloon angioplasty, in-stent restenosis (ISR) still represents a major limitation of this approach. In the last decades several attempts have been made to lower ISR occurrence but most of the strategies adopted failed to demonstrate any benefit. Recently, the concept of using stents coated with agents that could potentially inhibit restenosis has emerged and drug-eluting stents (DES) represent one of the fastest growing fields in interventional cardiology today. The article reviews the progress of the DES concept and the results of the major clinical trials evaluating the impact of DES on restenosis.