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Bleeding stents ... Is the drug-eluting stent era over?
Posted by Ogan Gurel MD MPhil at 19 July 2007, 3:56 PM and is filed under Boston Scientific,Drug-eluting stents,J and J,Safety


An article by Steve Syre in today’s Boston Globe – “Bleeding stent sales” (and picked up by DeviceTalk) noted the rather precipitous decline in drug-eluting stent sales during the past year. J+J, for example, reported a drop of 41% in the second quarter of this year alone. Two things: (1) this reversal of fortune was predicted last year in a series of articles in this blog and (2) this further validates the concept of drug-eluting stents as being a “transitional” technology.

Steve Syre’s title “Bleeding stent sales” is about as pithy as it gets. The problem – as anyone who has been following the sector knows – is the small, but significant rate of in-stent thrombosis over the long-term that has been seen with drug-eluting stents (DES). To put it in lay terms, basically the region around the stent remains, for reasons not entirely known, somewhat unstable and prone to clotting up (thrombosis). Such an adverse effect is very serious and, in fact, not uncommonly fatal.
Problems with drug-eluting stents predicted last year
A series of articles last year highlighted this safety problem and when put in context with the increasing importance of safety in general (not just with DES but across-the-board in pharmaceuticals and medical devices), a “triple storm” was developing that significantly put at risk the growth projections for the DES market. In fact, as the Boston Globe article highlighted, there has been a decline in sales for several of the current DES manufacturers. Those articles can be found at:
The Future of Drug-Eluting Stents: A Big Issue or a Non-Issue? (26 June 2006)
Drug-Eluting Stent Market: $5 Billion Turning on a Dime (24 July 2006)
Drug-Eluting Stents, Part One: Triple Storm Catching Industry Attention (27 November 2006)
Drug-Eluting Stents, Part Two: Triple Storm Catching Industry Attention (28 November 2006)