What are the two types of stents?

What are the two types of stents?

Stents can be classified into two categories: bare-metal stents and drug-eluting stents.

• Bare-metal stents have no special coating.
• Drug-eluting stents are coated with medication that is slowly released (eluted) to help prevent the growth of scar tissue in the artery lining.

Is a stent and a catheter the same?

A stent is a small, metal mesh tube that acts as a scaffold to provide support inside the coronary artery. A balloon catheter, placed over a guide wire, is used to insert the stent into the narrowed artery. Once in place, the balloon is inflated and the stent expands to the size of the artery and holds it open.

How long does a stent last?

“In the majority of patients, stents will stay open forever,” says Jefferson cardiologist David L. Fischman, MD, co-director of Jefferson’s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory. “When patients come back 5, 10, 15, 20 years later with a problem it is usually not the stent, it is the development of new blockages.”

What is the difference between a stent and angioplasty?

Angioplasty is a procedure to open narrowed or blocked blood vessels that supply blood to the heart. These blood vessels are called the coronary arteries. A coronary artery stent is a small, metal mesh tube that expands inside a coronary artery. A stent is often placed during or immediately after angioplasty.

How long can you live with a stent in your heart?

Even though drug eluting stents have a higher re-obstruction rate, most studies go only four to five years after stenting and indicate that the risk of re-obstruction is generally about 1 to 2 percent for either type of stent.

What drugs remove plaque from arteries?

Statins May Reverse Plaque Buildup. March 13, 2006 (Atlanta) — For the first time, a popular cholesterol-lowering statin drug has been shown to actually clear plaque out of fat-clogged heart arteries.

Can plaque in arteries go away?

The key is lowering LDL and making lifestyle changes. “Making plaque disappear is not possible, but we can shrink and stabilize it,” says cardiologist Dr. Christopher Cannon, a Harvard Medical School professor. Plaque forms when cholesterol (above, in yellow) lodges in the wall of the artery.

Can plaque be removed from arteries naturally?

Is it possible to Unclog Arteries Naturally? Although it isn’t possible to remove plaque from your arterial walls without surgery, you can halt and prevent future plaque build-up.