In Patients with diabetes, drug-coated stents prove safer and more effective than bare metal stents, a new study says.

Study author Dr. Laura Mauri, who is an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, says: “With drug-coated stents, I would say, there is clear efficacy and clear reduction for repeat revascularization procedures.”

“This is an important caveat and I think we have to judge our patients and need to know them as individual to determine on a case-by-case basis. It’s not a blanket statement, but in general, use of drug-coated stents in diabetic patients is really quite beneficial,” Mauri added.

The study has been presented at the American Heart Association’s annual scientific sessions in New Orleans on Monday.

The safety of drug-coated stents against traditional bare metal stents has been a controversial issue for quite some time.

In People with diabetes, there is a higher prevalence of ischemic heart disease than the general population, but in this group, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has limitations.

Dr. David Williams from Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital in Providence says in this connection: “It’s a controversial issue to select PCI as a treatment for diabetics and one of the basic weaknesses of PCI in diabetics is a relatively high need to perform repeat revascularization.”