Drug-Eluting Stents Benefit Women as Well as Men

Initially, angioplasty study results suggested poorer outcomes for women than for men; moreover, subsequent reports about the performance of bare-metal stents yielded conflicting results. Drug-eluting stents have become standard therapy, but outcomes for women have not been delineated. In four pooled trials evaluating a sirolimus-eluting stent (SES), investigators sought to determine whether outcomes were sex-specific. All patients (1251 men; 497 women) had angina or provoked myocardial ischemia treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and were randomly assigned to receive SESs or bare-metal stents. Compared with men, women were on average 5 years older and were more likely to have diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, and res…