Cooper vascular surgeons implanted the first drug-eluting stent for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease (PVD) in the state of New Jersey. Zilver® PTX®(COOK MEDICAL, Bloomington, IN), the first drug-eluting stent (DES) of its kind, was recently approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and made available to only a select few centers of excellence in the country.
The procedure was performed by Joseph V. Lombardi, MD, Head of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at Cooper University Health Care.
Peripheral vascular disease is a common circulatory problem, affecting over 10 million people in the United States, in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to limbs, usually in the legs. Patients who suffer from PVD involving the legs can have extreme discomfort, disability and even limb loss.
“Advances in stent technology, such as Zilver PTX, will ensure that procedures to treat lower-extremity PVD prove more durable by limiting restenosis commonly seen in patients treated with traditional bare metal stents,” says Dr. Lombardi.
Restenosis is an adverse effect from a traditional bare metal stent that can cause a narrowing of the artery and, ultimately, complete failure. According to research conducted by the manufacturer, at one year, 83 percent of the vessels treated with Zilver PTX were still open compared with 33 percent of the blood vessels treated with angioplasty alone. Patients who did not do well with angioplasty were treated with either a common bare metal stent or the drug-eluting PTX stent. A 12-month follow-up showed 90 percent of the PTX-treated vessels open versus only 73 percent of the bare metal stents.
The procedure is performed at Cooper University Hospital as a minimally invasive, outpatient procedure.
“Our patients are usually back to work the next day depending on their complexity,” said Dr. Lombardi.