Stents Don't Prevent Heart Attack or Death

March 26, 2007 — -- Doctors hoping to minimize chest pains associated with heart disease and perhaps even prevent heart attacks have long treated patients with stents, hollow tubes surgically implanted into blocked artery to prop them open.

Now a landmark study shows that while stents may improve blood flow, using them along with conventional drug therapies is no more effective at preventing heart attacks and other cardiac events than drug therapy alone. The findings, announced today at the American College of Cardiology conference, could have profound effects for patients and device manufacturers, since a staggering 800,000 Americans receive stents each year.

The Clinical Outcome Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation, or COURAGE, study looked at more than 2,200 patients in the United States and Canada with a blocked artery and chronic chest pain and found that those treated with the traditional mélange of drugs -- high doses of statins, blood-pressure lowering medications and aspirin -- fared just as well as those who also received stents.

There was no statistical difference in how long patients lived or whether they suffered a heart attack, and the procedure only moderately improved angina, chest pains associated with defective heart muscle. And the relief wasn't permanent: After five years, there was no difference in symptoms between patients who received a stent in addition to medication and those treated with medication alone.

"It does not relieve risk of heart attack and it is only marginally better at relieving angina, so why should you go on stenting?" said Steve Nissen, president of the American College of Cardiology. "We should reserve it for those that just don't do well on medical therapy or if they have symptoms that are interfering with lifestyle," he added.

He said that, in fact, there is no reason to think stents would prevent heart attack. "What happens when you put a stent in is you're attacking one narrowing in the artery, but it's not the narrowing that's going to cause the next heart attack," he explained. "It's the plaque developing everywhere else that's going to cause the next heart attack and that's what the medicines treat."