PARIS, May 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Abbott
(NYSE: ABT) today announced positive six-month results
from the first 45 patients enrolled in the second stage of the
ABSORB trial, which was presented during the Late-Breaking Clinical
Trials session at the EuroPCR 2010 conference. At six months,
Abbott’s bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS) demonstrated strong
results, with a low (4.4 percent) rate of major adverse cardiac
events (MACE(1)) and no blood clots (thromboses). Abbott’s BVS also
demonstrated an in-stent late loss rate of 0.19 mm. Late loss is a
measure of vessel re-narrowing and looks at the change in the
diameter inside the device between the time immediately following
scaffold placement and at six months. The amount of re-narrowing
tells physicians how effective a scaffold procedure was at keeping
the blood vessel open.

“With each new data milestone, Abbott’s revolutionary BVS
technology is one step closer to becoming a reality. The device
achieved a six-month late loss rate of 0.19 mm. This finding
suggests that the BVS may have the potential to treat a blocked
vessel as effectively as a metallic drug eluting stent, with the
added potential benefit of not leaving a permanent implant behind
after the vessel is healed,” said Patrick
W. Serruys, M.D., Ph.D., professor of interventional
cardiology at the Thoraxcentre, Erasmus
University Hospital, Rotterdam,
the Netherlands, and principal investigator for the ABSORB
trial. “These extraordinary findings signal that Abbott’s
disappearing scaffold may become the new standard of care for
treating coronary artery disease.”

Abbott’s BVS, which is under clinical investigation

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