Stent Growth Stunted
Boston Globe columnist Steven Syre has a piece today about the sharp reversal of fortune for the drug-eluting stent businesses of Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific. In its second-quarter financial report, J&J said sales of Cypher were down 41% from a year ago. Boston Scientific is expected to show similar numbers when it issues its earnings statement on Friday.
July 19, 2007
Today, doctors choose not to use drug-eluting stents in angioplasty procedures about 35% of the time, compared to 16% a year ago. Which means use of bare-metal stents and balloon procedures without stenting have gone up. As a whole, angioplasty procedures are down 8%.All this has to do with studies that have been published in the past year. Some have found that drug-eluting stents present an increased risk of clotting, and others have questioned whether angioplasty is needed at all, other than in cases where the patient has just had a heart attack. We are in an era where publicity about positive findings can get a device adopted rapidly, but also where publicity about negative findings can push doctors to change their practices quickly. J&J and Boston Scientific have now experienced both. The device industry will have to get used to it.
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