Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the recent progress and clinical application of percutaneous coronary intervention and to seek the direction of new developments.
METHODS: A computerized online database of Pubmed was searched to identify articles published from May 2000 to February 2009 with the key words of “drug eluting stents, percutaneous coronary intervention, and coronary disease”. There were 154 articles were retrieved by computer, by reading titles and abstracts, 27 literatures were remained after excluding 74 irrespective papers and 53 repetitive studies. 
RESULTS: An ideal drug-eluting stent (DES) was comprised of a platform, a drug carrier vehicle and a pharmaceutical compound in harmony with each other. With the ongoing development of DES materials and drugs, more effective DES was introduced in the practice. Recently, clinical data on DES encourage the interventional cardiologist to use DES in more challenging coronary lesions, such as chronic total occlusions, complex lesions and muiti-vessel lesions. However, the safety and efficacy of DES need further attention. Therefore, novel strategies including bioabsorbable stents, and pro-healing agents coated stents were promising.
CONCLUSION: The development of percutaneous coronary intervention is a breakthrough in intervention cardiology that brings great benefit to patients with coronary disease, especially for restenosis and revascularization. Nevertheless, more endeavour will be necessary to create PCI with high efficacy as well as low risk, and safety and effectiveness of PCI in patients with ST-segment evaluation myocardial infraction and stent fracture prevention need further study.