Florida Cypher/Taxus Cardiac Stents Attorneys

The FDA confirmed that it was aware of recent data suggesting a significant increase in the rate of death and myocardial infarction (heart attack) possibly due to stent thrombosis (a blood clot in the stent) in patients treated with DES.

Stents are small, expandable, stainless steel tubes used to prop open and offer support to arteries that would otherwise be collapsing. The CYPHER® and TAXUS® Stents are drug eluting stents (DES), also known as medicated stents. Unlike bare metal stents, they are coated in medications intended to prevent restenosis (reblocking of the artery). Medicated stents are increasingly common, representing approximately 90% of all stents sold in the U.S. in recent years.

Since the CYPHER® Sirolimus-eluting stent first received approval for use on April 24, 2003 and the TAXUS® Express Paclitaxel-eluting stent received approval for use by the FDA on March 4, 2004, over 1.5 million CYPHER® stents have been implanted in patients worldwide and over 3 million TAXUS® stents have been implanted in patients worldwide for treatment of coronary artery disease. This has generated $5 billion in sales revenue to the manufacturers.

Recent studies have linked medicated stents with side effects such as thrombosis (blood clotting) and the need for long-term costly antiplatelet medication therapy in order to prevent thrombosis. The studies also found that the drug-coated stents may result in a higher death rate due to cardiac events such as heart attack when compared to metal stents without a drug coating.

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