Drug Coated Stents Endeavor vs Taxus Safety Data Presented
March 31st, 2008 amy
To add to the great drug coated stents safety and effectiveness debate, data showing strong clinical efficacy for Medtronic’s Endeavor drug coated stent were presented yesterday at the American College of Cardiology meeting. Entitled “One-Year Clinical and Angiographic Results in Diabetics from ENDEAVOR IV: A Randomized Comparison of the Endeavor Drug Eluting Stent System Versus Taxus in de novo Native Coronary Lesions” (2803-8) - the presentation featured an analysis of 477 diabetic patients from the ENDEAVOR IV clinical study. ENDEAVOR IV is an ongoing head-to-head comparison of the Endeavor and Taxus stents in 1,548 patients.
For overall mortality, Taxus’s rate was 0.9% over Endeavor’s 0%, and both had a myocardial infarction rate of 0.9%. Other results were similar between the two, although Taxus’ percentages were slightly higher for target vessel revascularization and target vessel failure. Keep in mind, this study is funded by Medtronic, and the safety and effectiveness of the Endeavor stent have not been FDA approved for diabetic patients.
Overall, many surgeons are still avoiding using drug coated stents except where absolutely necessary, since the a study published in December 2006 linked drug coated stents with a 4-5 times higher rate of deadly blood clotting.
