Mid-term clinical and angiographic follow-up outcome after placement of a new balloon expandable stent in native coronary arteries

The widely disparate characteristics that exist among the different stent d esigns currently available for clinical use may impact on their acute and l ate angiographic and clinical results. The BeStent (Medtronic Instent, MN) is a relatively new stainless steel, laser-cut, serpentine stent design wit h only very limited data regarding its performance. In this report, we exam ined the results of 74 consecutive patients (54 men, 20 women; mean age, 58 years) treated with 76 BeStents in 75 native coronary arteries with a mean reference size of 2.8 mm. Successful stenting without 30-day major adverse cardiac complications was achieved in 97.3% of procedures, resulting in a significant improvement in diameter stenosis from 85% to 2% (P = 0.0001). S ix-month angiographic restudy in 88% of patients revealed a per-lesion in-s tent restenosis rate of 27%. At a mean follow-up period of 9.3 months, ther e were no deaths or myocardial infarctions. In summary, the present study d emonstrates that the BeStent has an excellent performance profile, is assoc iated with a low risk of stent thrombosis, and yields an acceptable resteno sis rate despite the inclusion of a high proportion of patients with diabet es (41%) and small vessels (< 3.0 mm in diameter; 77%). (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss , Inc.