Friday, October 27, 2006

More from TCT 2006

This internet is really great. I play golf in KL and get the latest news from Washington about 24 hours after it happened. The time taken to fly there and back would be longer than that.

Obviously one of the hottest topic being discussed in Washington is late stent thrombosis. We see great emphasis on this. Johnson and Johnson Cordis has launched a 20,000 patient study with 5 year follow up that tries to address this issue. 20,000 patients. They are also embarking on another 30,000 patient registry. Wow, 30,000? that must be quite decisive. It appears that they are confident of their results but we must always wait and see what happens.

Maybe the second generation DES is another attempt to address this LST issue. We see the reporting of "The ABSORB Study" which is the bioabsorbable DES stent with bioabsorbable polymer. This First-in-man study showed that it is safe, but the results are not quite there yet. Much work needs to be done.

TCT also reported the early results of NOBORI. NOBORI compared the S-stent coated with Biolimus, with the Taxus stent, in a 2:1 randomisation, in a non-inferiority manner, and found that the Terumo S-stent (Singapore stent) was just as good as Taxus. However, for the confidence of Taxus, it was certainly superior to the Abott Zomaxx stent, which was shown in the Zomaxx 1 study to be inferior to Taxus. No wonder one month ago, Abott decided to withdraw the production of the Zomaxx stent, and concentrate on the Xscient V stent. A wise move, as the Xscient V stent is certainly superior to the Taxus stent, at least in terms of late loss, and possibly TLR (target lesion revascularisation).

More news from Washington tomorrow. Meanwhile, it's time for more golf.

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