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Heart
Disease Patients Benefit From Cancer Drug
Florida Hospital First
In Area To Provide Revolutionary New Coronary Stent System
March 8, 2004 - Orlando, FL - Florida Hospital's cardiac catheterization laboratory is now broadly using the newly FDA-approved TAXUS™ Express2™ Paclitaxel-Eluting Coronary Stent System. The hospital's interventional cardiologists will begin using this product immediately to treat coronary artery disease (CAD).
The FDA approved the Taxus stenting system on March 4, 2004. However, Florida Hospital has been implanting the stents on patients in clinical trials since April 2002, and was one of the top five hospitals for patient enrollment across the country. "We were impressed that in clinical trials, the Taxus stent demonstrated superior measures of efficacy and safety compared to bare metal stents. As a result, the technology can be used with more patient types and more lesions," said principal investigator Dr. Joel Greenberg, an interventional cardiologist at Florida Hospital.
The Taxus stent is a new paclitaxel-coated stent system that helps to prevent the renarrowing (restenosis) of a coronary artery after balloon angioplasty and stenting, reducing the need for repeat procedures. Angioplasty and "bare metal" stents have often been used to treat narrowed vessels. The drug paclitaxel was previously approved by the FDA to treat breast, ovarian, and lung cancers.
The Taxus stent is the second drug-eluting stent to be approved by the FDA and used at Florida Hospital. In April 2003, Florida Hospital was the first hospital in Central Florida to use the Johnson & Johnson Cypher stent, which emits the drug sirolimus to prevent restenosis, instead of the cancer drug used in the Taxus stent. Demand for that stent exceeded the supply, but now with two drug-eluting stents on the market, every patient who is clinically eligible for a drug-coated stent will likely get one.
"Our
interventional cardiologists and staff are very enthusiastic about the Taxus stent
system," said Danielle Johnson, RN, BSBM, administrative director of cardiovascular
services at Florida Hospital. "We're looking forward to using this important
technology to advance our angioplasty and stenting procedures even further. The
high degree of consistency and reliability demonstrated in Taxus clinical trials
will provide our practitioners with the ability to achieve better and more predictable
outcomes."
Coronary
artery disease affects approximately 11 million Americans and is the single leading
killer of American men and women, causing approximately 500,000 deaths per year.
CAD affects the arteries that surround the heart. These coronary arteries supply
blood with oxygen to the heart muscle to make it function properly. CAD occurs
when the inner walls of the coronary arteries thicken due to a buildup of cholesterol,
fats, calcium and other elements carried in the blood. This buildup is called
plaque. As the plaque develops, the vessel narrows and blood flow through the
center of the vessel becomes restricted. This condition, atherosclerosis, may
lead to chest pain or a heart attack.
Florida Hospital is the area's leading heart hospital, performing nearly 17,000 complex heart procedures a year. The award-winning, nationally recognized cardiac program at Florida Hospital participates in more than 35 different clinical trials each year and offers new drugs, new technologies, and innovative treatments that continue to break ground in cardiac care. Florida Hospital is recognized by U.S News & World Report as one of the nation's best hospitals for heart and heart surgery, and was featured as the premier hospital in MSNBC's primetime news special, "America's Heart Hospital."
The
TAXUS Express2 Paclitaxel-Eluting Coronary Stent System is made by Boston Scientific,
a worldwide developer, manufacturer and marketer of medical devices whose products
are used in a broad range of interventional medical specialties. For more information,
please visit: www.bostonscientific.com
or www.TAXUS-stent.com.
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This release
is located on the Internet at: http://www.floridahospital.org/