Drug-eluting stent restenosis

Drug-eluting stents (DESs) have been enthusiastically adopted by the interventional community following encouraging data from randomized trials (1, 2). As with many new technologies initial enthusiasm is being dampened by more realistic results from complex patient and lesion subsets. There is no doubt that DESs represent a vast improvement; however, we must realize that they are not a magic bullet and restenosis remains a real problem. We will present data on the incidence, etiology, treatment, and prognosis of this challenging lesion cohort. While many new stents and drugs are under investigation or have recently come to the market, we will focus on the two initially commercially available platforms-the sirolimus-eluting (SES) CypherTM stent (Cordis/Johnson & Johnson, Warren, NJ) and the paclitaxel-eluting (PES) TaxusTM stent (Boston Scientific, Natick, MA).