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Small Dissolvable Heart Stents Bring Big Benefits to Heart Patients

Small Dissolvable Heart Stents Bring Big Benefits to Heart Patients
Date Posted: Friday, July 15th, 2016

A team of HonorHealth doctors have implanted the first commercial dissolvable stent in the United States. The medical breakthrough will likely change angioplasty procedures worldwide.

A newly approved dissolvable heart stent could open up options for cardiac patients just as the stent opens the heart's blood vessels, according to a team of doctors in Scottsdale.

Doctors at HonorHealth, who had participated in clinical trials of the device, on Wednesday performed the country’s first commercial implant of a dissolvable heart stent, according to Jeff Holeman, an HonorHealth spokesman.

The recipient: Doug Taylor, a 73-year-old Scottsdale man hoping to return to running marathons.

While Taylor rested, the team of doctors — David Rizik, Maulik Shah, Bimal Padaliya and Robert Burke — discussed the results of the operation and answered questions about the technology on Thursday.

Since the invention and initial patenting by Julio Palmaz in 1945, the balloon expandable metal stent has been a standard in angioplasty procedures.

Stents are latticelike support structures used to flatten plaque that is restricting blood flow in an individual's blood vessels. The metal structures enter a blood vessel wrapped tightly around a small balloon, which is then inflated. The stent expands, pushing against the vessel wall, permitting an increase in blood flow.

While the use of metal stents to treat blocked blood vessels is usually very successful, it limits the options doctors have for performing future work on a patient’s heart.

Some patients may require multiple metal stents over several surgeries, which can result in a layer of metal inside their blood vessel. Metal stents also prevent doctors from performing bypass surgeries on the vessel and can cause irritation and inflammation.

The dissolvable stent, manufactured by Abbott Vascular, is made from a lactic acid polymer that slowly breaks down into water and carbon dioxide after supporting the vessel for nine months, the doctors said. Lactic acid can be found naturally in the human body.

Dissolvable stents have almost none of the downsides associated with metal stents, the doctors said.

Based on the clinical trials, within the first year of implantation, the dissolvable stents performed just as well as metal stents, the doctors said. By the second and third years after implantation, the stents were gone and in some cases the patient’s blood vessels actually grew larger than when the stents were initially placed, they said.

Blood vessels naturally expand and contract throughout the course of a person’s daily life. And unlike metal stents, the dissolvable stents allow movement in the vessel.

Like their metal counterparts, the dissolvable stents are coated with an anti-inflammatory medicine to help reduce the irritation associated with their use.

Doug Taylor, 73, of Scottsdale received the first commercial dissolvable heart stent on July 6, 2016. He is an avid runner and the stent will hopefully allow him to return to his lifestyle without becoming a permanent fixture in his heart, doctors say. (Photo: HonorHealth)

The doctors chose Taylor as the first recipient of the stent after the FDA approved them on Tuesday.

Taylor was chosen specifically because, other than his heart condition, he is in very good shape, and the doctors didn’t want to limit his options in the event he needed future heart operations.

“He’s got a lot of good years left ahead of him. To limit our options with a metallic stent is really to limit his options,” Rizik said.

Rizik is an interventional cardiologist and was a principal investigator for the dissolvable stent during their clinical trials at the Honor Health Research Institute. He was a member of the team of doctors who implanted the stent in Taylor.

A day after his surgery, Taylor was doing well, according to Rizik. The doctors expect Taylor will be able to fully return to his previous lifestyle, including running marathons.

Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. More than 370,000 people die from heart disease every year, accounting for one in every four deaths. Cardiovascular diseases claim more lives than all forms of cancer combined, the doctors said.

Because the dissolvable stent technology is relatively new, metal stents will continue to be used for most angioplasty operations, the doctors said.

But future iterations of the dissolvable stents probably will result in smaller and more efficient versions of the structure, Rizik said. He said he hopes the use of dissolvable stents will become more common worldwide; in the meantime, he said the team of doctors at HonorHealth will continue to implant the dissolvable stents locally.

Source: AZCentral.com

Date Posted: Friday, July 15th, 2016 , Total Page Views: 1112

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