The day after the United States Food and Drug Administration approved a drug-releasing coronary stent designed to keep the artery unclogged, a UW Medicine Heart Center team inserted this stent during a procedure April 25. The Cypher stent, which looks like a tiny, chain-link tunnel, has been available for nearly a year in many other countries.

The UW interventional cardiologists used thin wires, narrow tubes and a video monitor to guide the stent into place. They threaded the stent from a blood vessel in the groin and into the damaged heart vessel. The stent provides a scaffold for the blood vessel. The Cypher stent is coated with the drug sirolimus, which inhibits cell division and thereby limits scar formation. Sirolimus leaches into the artery for about a month after the procedure.

In a clinical trial of 1,400 patients, the drug-coated stent reduced the incidence of re-blockage by about two-thirds when compared to a standard metal stent. The manufacturer is Cordis, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

Performing the April 25 Cypher stent insertion were Douglas Stewart, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and director of UW Medical Center's Heart Cath Lab; Dr. Steven Goldberg, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology; critical care nurse Max Kuttner; imaging technologist John Birks; and cardiovascular technologist Eithne Doran. Their patient was a female, 43, with type 1 diabetes.