, /PRNewswire/ -- Morton Plant Hospital recently became the first hospital in the area to use a drug-coated balloon to treat in-stent restenosis. The hospital was ranked #1 in for Cardiac Surgery in 2023 by Healthgrades, where the area's took place in early June. BayCare Medical Group's Interventional Cardiologist Lang Lin, MD, and her expert team of medical professionals at Morton Plant Hospital performed the first procedure with the drug-coated balloon earlier this month.
Restenosis occurs when an artery that has previously been stented narrows again because of plaque or scar tissue. Treating in-stent restenosis remains a significant challenge for both patients and cardiologists, even 20 years after drug-eluting stents (which are coated with medicine to keep arteries open) became the standard of care." Dr.
Lin said. Until now, in-stent restenosis has most commonly been treated in one of two ways: by placing an additional stent in the stent of the artery that has narrowed again or by performing coronary artery bypass surgery. The challenge with two or more layers of stents is that additional stents become less effective and more difficult to treat.
Coronary artery bypass surgery has increased risks with older patients and sometimes limited bypass target vessels. The new drug-coated balloon, AGENTTM from Boston Scientific, was approved by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for commercial use in March. The balloon catheter, the first drug-coated coronary balloon in , .
