Drug-Eluting Stent

A small mesh tube placed inside a narrowed artery, most often a coronary artery, coated with a medication that slowly releases into the surrounding tissue to prevent the artery from renarrowing after the stent is implanted. It is an advance on the bare metal stent, which holds a treated artery open mechanically but does nothing to stop the regrowth of scar-like tissue that can gradually close the artery again after the original blockage is cleared. The coating typically carries an immunosuppressant or antiproliferative drug that slows the overgrowth of the artery's inner lining at the site of the stent, and the device reached wide clinical use in the early 2000s after trials showed it markedly reduced the rate of renarrowing compared with earlier bare metal designs. Because slower healing at the stent site can also raise the risk of a blood clot forming on the device itself, patients who receive one are generally treated with a course of blood-thinning medication for a period afterward, and the choice between a drug-eluting and a bare metal stent is weighed case by case against that tradeoff.