A stent that does its job, then leaves: nine patients, one year, no major heart events

When a stent itself becomes the blockage — scar tissue growing inside it — cardiologists have few good options. A retrievable stent system called Spur Elute, which delivers the drug sirolimus and is then removed, has now passed a careful first test in people. In the DEEPER CORONARY first-in-human study, all nine treated patients completed a full year of follow-up: every one was free of major adverse cardiac events and alive at 12 months, device delivery succeeded in all nine, remaining narrowing averaged just 13.3%, and every patient's angina class improved, by a median of three classes. The results, led by principal investigator Scott Harding of Wellington Hospital, New Zealand, were presented at the TCT conference in San Diego. Nine patients is a beginning, not a proof — but it is exactly the beginning researchers hoped for.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation