An Update on Drug-Eluting

With their introduction in 2003, drug-eluting stents revolutionized interventional cardiology and were quickly adopted into practice. Within a short period of time they were the stent of choice in over 90 % of percutaneous coronary interventions. However, this past September, concerns were raised at the World Cardiology Congress in Barcelona about the risk of late stent thrombosis with drug-eluting stents. Since then, a flurry of research has occurred in an attempt to define the risk of late stent thrombosis in drug-eluting stents compared with bare-metal stents, as well as to determine the pathophysiology and predictors of late stent thrombosis. Longer use of dual antiplatelet therapy has been advocated and interventional cardiologists are modifying their practices in hopes of tipping the risk-benefit ratio in favor of optimizing patient outcomes.