Sept. 4, 2001

UMC Offers New Treatment for Narrowing Inside Coronary Artery Stents

University Medical Center is offering a new treatment option for patients who suffer from instrastent restensosis - the narrowing that can occur inside the scaffolds placed inside coronary arteries after angioplasty to hold them open.
Called coronary brachytherapy, the procedure involves placing radioactive beads near the stents for a few minutes, via a catheter that runs through their veins, to kill obstructive scar tissue. The procedure does not involve surgery and patients usually can go home the day after the procedure.

"While the clinical incidence of intrastent restenosis remains low, we have a readily available percutaneous treatment that is the only clinically-proven and FDA-approved method to treat this problem effectively," says Samuel Butman, MD, director of the UMC Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and a member of the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center.

"This hopefully will obviate the need for coronary bypass surgery in some patients," Dr. Butman says.

Stents, which are wire mesh tubes, often are inserted inside arteries that have been cleared with angioplasty, The stent stays in the artery permanently, holding it open to improve blood flow to the heart muscle.

One of the major limitations of coronary angioplasty is restenosis, which occurs in about 30 percent of patients. With the advent of intracoronary stents, the incidence decreased to about 15 percent. Up until recently, restenosis inside the stents has been difficult to treat and patients often had to be referred for another angioplasty or open-heart bypass surgery.

UMC plans to begin offering the treatment next month.