The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7421 p416
7 October 2006

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Drug-eluting stents not less safe, says MHRA

Adverse incident reports on drug-eluting stents do not support the suggestion that they are less safe than non-drug-eluting stents, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said last week.

In a statement issued in response to data presented at the World Congress of Cardiology in Barcelona last month (PJ, 23 September, p361), the MHRA said: “The MHRA investigates all adverse incident reports received from stent manufacturers and clinicians. Our evaluation of these reports to date does not indicate that drug-eluting stents are less safe than non drug-eluting coronary stents.”

The MHRA will continue to assess the safety of drug-eluting coronary stents as more information on their long-term performance becomes available, it added.