Do drug-eluting stents increase the rate of death compared to bare-metal stents in patients in Sweden?
In this Swedish cohort, drug-eluting stents were associated with a slightly higher long-term risk of death and myocardial infarction compared to bare-metal stents, highlighting the need for randomized trial confirmation.
Drug-eluting stents were associated with an increased rate of death, as compared with bare-metal stents. This trend appeared after 6 months, when the risk of death was 0.5 percentage point higher and a composite of death or myocardial infarction was 0.5 to 1.0 percentage point higher per year. The long-term safety of drug-eluting stents needs to be ascertained in large, randomized trials.
Lagerqvist et al. (2007) studied this question.