Increased risk of major clinical events late after treatment with drug-eluting stents.

The article presents a study which compares the incidence of late clinical events after withdrawal of clopidogrel, an oral antiplatelet agent, between patients treated with drug-eluting stents (DES) and those with bare-metal stents (BMS). The study utilizes 826 consecutive subjects who were randomly assigned to treatment with DES or BMS. Results of the study revealed that the incidence of cardiac death or myocardial infarction after discontinuance of clopidogrel was higher with DES subjects.