Abbott Laboratories has come up with a novel arterial stent for heart patients that dissolves when it has completed its job. The stent is made from a polymer that is used for other medical applications.
Jon Kamp, Special Writer for Dow Jones Newswires, explains in his Wall Street Journal piece,
Stents are scaffold-like devices used to prop open clogged heart arteries. Most stents are made of metal. But Abbott’s new device, called Absorb, is made from a plastic-like material called polylactide that is commonly used in surgical sutures. The Absorb scaffold — Abbott doesn’t call it a stent — is designed to completely fade away in two years and to cease supporting arteries at six months.
Polylactide belongs to the polyester family of polymers. It’s compatible with human organs and made from agricultural products, such as corn starch, sugarcane, and tapioca.
Abbott won approval for Absorb this year from the European Union (EU) regulatory agency. However, for the time being, the company will only carry out limited marketing in Europe until it has more data next year. The company doesn’t plan on applying for U.S. regulatory approval until 2015.
Source: “Patients May Benefit From New Heart Device,” The Wall Street Journal, 03/30/11
Image: Abbott Laboratories Logo.
Rajendrani "Raj" Mukhopadhyay is a science writer and editor who contributes news stories and feature articles on scientific advances to a variety of magazines. Raj holds Ph.D. in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University.
[...] exit should help its competitors. Abbott is one of the companies that is promoting the newest generation of stents, the kind that dissolve away after its product life runs its course. In January, Abbott won [...]