SATURDAY, March 29 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment with a new
antiplatelet drug called prasugrel may be better than standard
treatment in protecting against blocked blood flow in patients with
at least one coronary stent, according to a new international
study.
Coronary stents are used to treat narrowing of arteries that
supply blood to the heart. But stents can result in blood clots
that can block the stented artery, a condition called stent
thrombosis. To prevent this, patients take antiplatelet medications
or anticoagulants after they've had stents inserted in arteries.
The standard treatment uses the drug clopidogrel (Plavix) with
aspirin.
Both prasugrel (Effient) and clopidogrel belong to a group of
compounds called thienopyridines.
In this study, Dr. Stephen Wiviott, of Brigham and Women's
Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues
analyzed data on 12,844 patients with different types of heart
stents who were treated with either prasugrel plus aspirin or
clopidogrel plus aspirin.
They found that patients who received intensive antiplatelet
therapy with prasugrel had fewer "ischemic events," including stent
thrombosis, than patients who received clopidogrel. The type of
stent was not a factor.
"These data highlight the importance of aggressive antiplatelet
therapy to reduce ischemic events in patients with acute coronary
syndromes undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention," the study
authors concluded. "When balancing risks and benefits of strategies
to prevent ischemic events, consideration should be given to
patient characteristics, including risk of bleeding and ischemic
events as well as stent and procedural characteristics."
The study was to be presented Saturday at the American College
of Cardiology annual meeting, in Chicago, and appears online in
The Lancet. It will be published in an upcoming print issue
of the journal.
More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about
stents.
