A BB&T

Concurrent with the activities of the American Diabetes Association annual meeting, Boston Scientific (Natick, Massachusetts) reported results from the multi-center Strategic Transcatheter Evaluation of New Therapies (STENT) registry, related to use of its Taxus stent in those with diabetes, billing STENT as “the largest prospective, comparative real-world drug-eluting stent study ever reported.”

It said an analysis of data on diabetic patients revealed “numerically favorable outcomes for the Taxus Express2 paclitaxel-eluting stent system compared to the Cypher sirolimus-eluting stent from Cordis [Miami Lakes, Florida] in reducing mortality rates and overall major adverse cardiovascular events.”

The STENT registry included follow-up on 5,566 patients at eight coronary centers in the U.S. who received either a Taxus or a Cypher system, including 1,680 diabetic patients, nearly 500 of whom were insulin-treated diabetics. Boston Sci said the new information “included nine-month outcomes for all diabetic patients and nine-month death rates in insulin-treated patients.”

Among the study’s diabetic patients, Taxus patients generally had more complex lesions than Cypher patients as evidenced by a slightly higher risk scores, smaller vessels and longer lesions. Despite this higher complexity, the Taxus, it said, demonstrated excellent outcomes in major adverse events compared to Cypher in diabetic patients overall (6.8% vs. 7.1%). In addition, rate of death was lower for Taxus (1.9% for Taxus, 3.4% for Cypher) without reaching statistical significance. Both groups presented excellent target vessel revascularization and sub-acute thrombosis rates.