Irish-made next-generation coronary stent system implanted in Dublin

20 Mar 2013

The Promus PREMIER Stent System

A next-generation drug-coated coronary stent made in Ireland has been successfully implanted for the first time worldwide in Dublin.

Boston Scientific in Ballybrit, Galway, is the manufacturer of the Promus PREMIER Stent System that has been implanted at the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences at the 10th Annual Live PCI Course held at St James’s Hospital on 1 March.

Stents such as the Promus PREMIER Stent System restore normal blood flow to narrowed or blocked arteries by keeping them open. Over time, the artery wall heals around the stent but excessive healing tissue can grow and block the stent. Drugs can help reduce this tissue growth, however.

The Promus PREMIER Stent System has been coated with a drug and a polymer, a compound designed to deliver a drug locally to reduce tissue in-growth. This lowers the risk of stent thrombosis and therefore reblocking of the artery and improves the long-term clinical results.

The stent, which is ultra-thin and made of flexible metal, represents an improvement in drug-eluting stent design to improve cardiologists’ ability to treat severe coronary artery disease using minimally invasive techniques, said Prof David Foley, an interventional cardiologist who works at Beaumont Hospital and Mater Private Hospitals, Dublin.

“I am particularly pleased to see a next-generation stent system with the latest technological advances in medical devices being made in our own country for the benefit of patients all across the world,” said Foley, who implanted the first Promus PREMIER Stent System.

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

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