One-year results from 101 patients enrolled in the second phase of the ABSORB trial evaluating the world’s first drug-eluting Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold (BVS) for the treatment of coronary artery disease were presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Scientific Session in New Orleans, USA.
At one year, the Absorb device (Abbott) demonstrated a 6.9% rate of major adverse cardiac events and no reports of thrombosis. In an analysis of 56 of the 101 patients, imaging results showed a late loss of 0.27mm, which is comparable to past data on drug-eluting stents. Of the patients’ vessels that were assessed for vasomotor function, nearly all showed signs of vasomotion at one year, indicating that vessel movement was observed in the arteries of these patients as their vessels were no longer constrained by the scaffold, which had begun to be metabolised.
“The one-year data in these patients confirm earlier results seen at the six- and nine-month periods – that the Absorb device has the potential to effectively treat coronary artery disease with the possibility of restoring natural vessel function in a way not possible with permanent metallic implants,” said Patrick W Serruys, Thoraxcentre, Erasmus University Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. “The one-year late loss seen with Absorb is similar to what has been seen in a historical series of drug-eluting stents, which is an encouraging indication that a bioresorbable scaffold like Absorb might be able to offer the performance capabilities of a metallic drug eluting stent but with the added benefit of eventually dissolving away.”
