By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, March 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Using stents rather than medication alone to keep narrowed arteries open in the brain may actually increase patients' risk of stroke, according to the results of a new trial.
The study involved more than 100 patients at risk of stroke because of what's called intracranial arterial stenosis -- plaque build-up in the artery walls in the brain. Those who received balloon-expandable stents -- tiny, mesh tubes like those used to open heart arteries -- were more than twice as likely to suffer a stroke or ministroke as patients treated with two blood thinners, Plavix and aspirin.
Moreover, in the month after the procedure, 8.6 percent of the stent patients suffered from bleeding in the brain and about 5 percent died, versus none of those who were treated with drugs.
"The current technology with balloon-mounted stent is very limited and is not recommended for patients with stroke or ministroke secondary to a narrowed brain artery," said the lead researcher, Dr. Osama Zaidat, an associate professor of neurology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
"For those people with symptomatic intracranial stenosis, medical [drug] therapy is the treatment of choice," he said.
The report was published in the March 24/31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
For the study, Zaidat and colleagues randomly assigned 112 patients with narrowed brain arteries to take the blood thinner Plavix (clopidogrel) plus aspirin or the stenting procedure plus medication.
The trial -- funded by California-based Micrus Endovascular Corp., the stent maker -- was halted at 112 patients after the results of another trial also showed that stents were linked to more strokes than they prevented. The new trial had been designed to enroll 250 patients, researchers said.
In the current study, about 24 percent of the stent patients suffered a stroke within 30 days compared to less than 10 percent of those treated with Plavix and aspirin, the researchers found.
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Stents Meant to Prevent Stroke May Actually Boost Risk