Drug-coated stents are safe to use and effective for all heart attack patients and they can cut death rates for heart attack victims, a new study finds.

A stent is a tiny tube placed into an artery or blood vessel to keep it open. They release drugs that help prevent blood vessels from reclogging after surgery to open them up.

The 7,217-patient study suggests that drug-coated stents are safer compared to older bare-metal stents. The death rate, incidence of second heart attacks, and need for new artery-opening procedures were lower for those getting drug-coated stents, according to the report in the Sept. 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The report found that 10.7 percent people with drug-coated stents versions died within two years, compared with 12.8 percent who had bare-metal devices. Moreover, patients with drug-coated stents also suffered fewer repeat heart attacks and were a third less likely to need a second operation to reopen a clogged artery, according to the research.

The study was funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Dr. Laura Mauri, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an interventional cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is the lead-author of the study.

This study is the last in a series of studies which showed that patients given drug-coated stents to prop open clogged heart arteries were unlikely to die or need ulterior procedure in case of complications compared to patients that have older, bare-metal devices.

For patients with ST-segment elevation – a kind of heart attack with a specific electrocardiogram signature – the two-year risk of death was 8.5% with drug-coated stents and 11.6% with bare-metal stents. For heart attack victims without ST-segment elevation, the two-year risk of death was 12.8% with drug-coated stents, compared to 15.6% with bare-metal stents.

In a nine month study, Swiss researchers led by professor Stephan Windecker of Bern University Hospita compared the results of the next generation drug-coated stents with conventional drug-coated stents in a study involving 1,700 patients. They found no significant difference in the performance of BioMatrix – a new drug-coated stent made by Singapore-based Biosensors International Group Ltd. – compared to a standard drug-eluting stent releasing sirolimus. Patients with chronic stable coronary artery disease or acute coronary syndromes received either of the two stents. At the end of the study, researchers found the number of deaths, heart attacks and repeat interventions were equivalent in both groups of patients.

The most recent drug-coated stent which received FDA’s approval is the Boston Scientific Corp.’s new Taxus drug-coated stent. The Food and Drug Administration approved the Boston Scientific Corp.’s new Taxus drug-coated stent, Boston Scientific Corp. announced Thursday. The Taxus Express2 stent is the only stent on the market approved for use in vessels as small as 2.25 millimeters, the manufacturer said. The stent is also approved to treat the recurrence of a narrowing artery in patients who have a bare-metal stent. Taxus stents compete with Johnson & Johnson’s Cypher stent, Abbott Laboratories Inc.'s Xience V and Medtronic Inc.'s Endeavor drug-coated stents.

Researchers say the studies “establish the non-inferiority” of the newer drug-coated stents.