Heart Stents Good Or Bad
Stents are mesh tubes that hold coronary arteries open and improve blood flow to the heart muscle. Drug-eluting stents, which release heart medications, have been popular since their introduction in 2003, when the FDA approved them for use in a select group of patients: the “plain vanilla” ones, according to Dr. Donald Baim, medical director of Boston Scientific, a major manufacturer of the devices. Patients in the first trials of drug-eluting stents were relatively healthy....