AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Patient Safety Authority (patientsafety.pa.gov) is an independent state agency that oversees the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS), the largest database of its kind in the United States.
Abstract
Drug-eluting stents (DES) offer patients less invasive options to reopen and maintain blocked coronary arteries. Advances in the design and manufacture of DES have made them smaller, allowing them to be placed in more severely blocked arteries. This also allows more complex patients to undergo less invasive stenting procedures.
A recent review of high harm event reports submitted to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS) included a patient safety event involving the failure of a DES during a percutaneous coronary intervention that resulted in a patient’s death. In this event, the balloon shaft broke, and the balloon was left in the coronary artery. Attempts to retrieve and remove the balloon failed, and the patient suffered cardiac arrest and passed away.
Keywords
drug-eluting stents (DES), coronary artery stents, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), device malfunction, patient safety
