Use of Drug-Eluting Stems as a Function of Predicted Benefit.

The article discusses a study to assess variations in drug-eluting stents (DES) use among U.S. physicians participating in the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR), the association between predicted target vessel revascularization (TVR) risk with bare-metal stents (BMS) with DES use and the estimated clinical and economic consequences of lower DES use in patients with low TVR risk. It concludes that DES use is common even on those predicted to be at the lowest restenosis risk.