Cheaper drug-eluting stent fares as well as Xience

September 23, 2018|Cardiology

REPORTING FROM TCT 2018

SAN DIEGO – The Supraflex drug-eluting stent is noninferior to Abbott’s Xience stent, according to results of the TALENT trial. Supfraflex elutes sirolimus from a bioabsorbable polymer, while Xience elutes everolimus from a durable polymer coating.

The research was conducted in response to a new pricing policy in India established in February 2017, which capped the price for drug-eluting stents at $440. About 550,000 stents are implanted annually in India, 90% of which are drug-eluting stents, and the number of procedures is growing at about 15% per year.

Stent technology has reached a “safety plateau,” which is leading to decisions based on economic factors, said Patrick Serruys, MD, during a presentation of the results at Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics annual meeting. Dr. Serruys is a professor of cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute of Imperial College in London.

The Indian government’s policy also requires companies to prove that their product is noninferior to proven stents. To satisfy that requirement, researchers conducted the Thin Strut Sirolimus-Eluting Stent in All Comers Population vs Everolimus-eluting Stent (TALENT) study. In this trial (NCT02870140), 1,435 patients from 23 sites were randomized to receive either the Supraflex stent, manufactured by India-based SMT, or the Xience stent.

The population was “all comers” who had symptomatic coronary artery disease that qualified for percutaneous coronary interventions, including chronic stable angina, silent ischemia, and acute coronary syndromes. The researchers followed patients out to 3 years.

The two groups were similar in their baseline characteristics, with the exception of previous coronary artery bypass graft, which was more frequent in the Xience group (7.7% versus 4.6%).