Early Use of Stents Better Than Medical Therapy Alone for Certain Patients, Stanford University Study

For patients with stable coronary artery disease who have at least one narrowed blood vessel that compromises flow to the heart, medical therapy alone leads to a significantly higher risk of hospitalization and the urgent need for a coronary stent when compared with therapy that also includes initial placement of artery-opening stents. Those are the findings of a study to be published online Aug. 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine that was designed to evaluate the benefits of using a diagnostic tool called fractional flow reserve, or FFR, to help determine the best course of treatment for fixing a narrowed artery.