Abstract

Coronary stent thrombosis remains an important problem after the implantation of different stent types. This study investigates the risk of stent thrombosis associated with the use of drug-eluting stents (DESs), bare-metal stents (BMSs) compared to balloon angioplasty. A meta-analysis of 28 randomized trials involving 5612 versus 7639 versus 2994 patients with coronary heart disease treated with DES, BMS, or balloon angioplasty was therefore performed. Comparing the implantation of DES versus BMS, DES was not found to increase the hazard for thrombosis up to 15 months (odds ratio [OR] = 0.86, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.58 to 1.3, p