A less-invasive check on stents

CT scans may be able to replace more invasive techniques to check whether heart devices called stents have become overgrown and need clearing, Dutch researchers reported last week.

Stents are tiny wire-mesh tubes inserted into clogged arteries. In some cases, especially with older metal stents, the devices can themselves become clogged with scar tissue.

Dr. Jeroen Bax of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands tested multislice imaging in 182 patients with 192 previously implanted stents. Of the total, images from 7%, or 14, of the stents were too blurry to read. In the remaining 178 stents, CT scans correctly identified 19 of 20 blocked stents.

Bax believes the technology could spare some patients the discomfort of angiography, which requires the insertion of a thin tube called a catheter into a small opening in the groin and threading it through blood vessels.

The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.