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Article: Drug-coated stents may prevent arteries from reclogging, studies find.
- Article from:
- The Dallas Morning News (Dallas, TX)
- Article date:
- January 25, 2002
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Dallas Morning News. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Laura Beil
Cardiologists would be bad at running a retail business. They don't like to have repeat customers.
Still, patients keep coming back for angioplasty. But if a new device works the way doctors hope it will, angioplasty may finally come with a lifetime guarantee.
Angioplasty can clear blocked coronary arteries, the small vessels that feed blood to heart muscle. The procedure is so successful that its use has almost tripled since 1987, with about 600,000 procedures now performed each year.
But the pipes often clog again months later. As many as 30 percent of angioplasty patients, Vice President Dick Cheney among them, ...