Mid-term clinical and angiographic follow-up outcome after placement of a new balloon expandable stent in native coronary arteries.

The widely disparate characteristics that exist among the different stent designs currently available for clinical use may impact on their acute and late angiographic and clinical results. The BeStent (Medtronic Instent, MN) is a relatively new stainless steel, laser-cut, serpentine stent design with only very limited data regarding its performance. In this report, we examined the results of 74 consecutive patients (54 men, 20 women; mean age, 58 years) treated with 76 BeStents in 75 native coronary arteries with a mean reference size of 2.8 mm. Successful stenting without 30-day major adverse cardiac complications was achieved in 97.3% of procedures, resulting in a significant improvement in diameter stenosis from 85% to 2% (P = 0.0001). Six-month angiographic restudy in 88% of patients revealed a per-lesion in-stent restenosis rate of 27%. At a mean follow-up period of 9.3 months, there were no deaths or myocardial infarctions. In summary, the present study demonstrates that the BeStent has an excellent performance profile, is associated with a low risk of stent thrombosis, and yields an acceptable restenosis rate despite the inclusion of a high proportion of patients with diabetes (41%) and small vessels (< 3.0 mm in diameter; 77%). Cathet. Cardiovasc. Intervent. 49:348–351, 2000. © 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.