According to the largest study to date on the link between drug-coated stents and people who have heart attacks, researchers found that none of the two types poses risk for heart attack patients and both are effective if used in accordance with their instructions.

Stents are mesh tubes that are inserted into a natural conduit of the body and are designed to open clogged arteries. Drug-coated stents, also called drug-eluting stents, are those stents which contain medications that potentially diminish the chance the arteries will block again.

Teams of researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital examined 7,217 Massachusetts residents who suffered heart attacks and who were given stents in 2003 and 2004. 4,016 patients were given drug-eluting stents, whereas the others received bare-metal stent recipients. During the two years of follow-up, 8.5% of the patients assigned to the first group passed away, in contrast with 11.6% of those who were assigned to the other group.

The study also found that second heart attack rate in patients who received the drug-eluting stents was lower, of 7.4%, compared to 8.5% of patients who got bare-metal stents.

On top of that, 14.9 percent of patients getting bare-metal stents asked for another procedure, compared to only 10.7 percent of those receiving drug-eluting stents.

The purpose of the study was to find out “whether drug-eluting stents are safe in this situation,” asserted study author Dr. Laura Mauri, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an interventional cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.