Bioabsorbable stents that have recently been introduced into medical practice have been studied and tested in Poland for six years. The team of prof. Dariusz Dudek from Krakow.
A week ago, doctors from the Polish-American Heart Clinics in Ustroń informed about the use of soluble stents in cardiology in a 55-year-old patient. Two days later, a similar stent was implanted in the patient by specialists from the Upper Silesian Medical Center in Katowice. The treatment was watched by eminent specialists from Poland, the USA, the Netherlands, Germany and China who participated in the interventional cardiology workshops.
Although bioabsorbable stents are not yet common in everyday medical practice, they are also not new in Poland. Their use was started by doctors and scientists from the University Hospital in Krakow, members of the Jagiellonian University research team led by prof. Dariusz Dudek.
This technology is called in the professional press “the fourth revolution in interventional cardiology”. The first implantation of the Abbott Vascular bioabsorbable stent in Poland took place on June 8, 2006 as part of the ABSORB-FIM research program initiated in Krakow as one of six centers in the world.
Initially, bioabsorbable stents were implanted in six patients, and after the publication of favorable treatment results for the first 30 patients in the world, research continued in other patients. In total, 2006 out of all 2009 patients were included in the study in the Krakow center in 19-101.
In the following years, until the second half of 2011, the procedures of Abbott bioabsorbable stent implantation were continued in Krakow – as the only center in Poland – in the ABSORB Extend study. Currently, work is underway on the Abbott stent in the ABSORB II study, to which the center in Poznań was invited, under the supervision of prof. Maciej Lesiak.
Abbot’s stent research has been published in many major medical journals. Prof. Dariusz Dudek, head of the Independent Laboratory of the Department of Hemodynamics and Angiography of the University Hospital in Krakow, is the author or co-author of 32 such publications.
Bioabsorbable stents are a type of mechanical scaffold for dilating a vessel and a drug reservoir that prevents restenosis, the process that causes it to narrow again. After stabilization of the widened part of the vessel, the stents dissolve completely. After two years at the latest, there is no trace of them in the body.
Until now, metal stents and drug-coated metal stents have been widely used. Experts indicate that the new method may become common in a year or two (PAP).
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