Can Heart Stents Fail and Cause Re-blockage in Patients?

Stents are tubular shaped components and consisting of ceramic or metal. It places a major role to keep a particular part of the patient’s coronary artery in open condition. Coronary arteries refer to blood vessels responsible for carrying the blood towards the heart muscles. Cardiologists place stents by following a cardiac angiogram procedure, where they place a catheter inside the groin and run towards the heart. However, before this, doctors perform an angioplasty procedure, where they open the narrowed blockage present in the artery based on inflation of nearby balloon and later on, places the respective stent.

After a few years, stent may develop blockages. For this, surgeons prefer drug-eluting stents in a few patients. In this case, they treat such stents by the help of drugs in an effort to reduce the risk related to the formation of blockages. Patients undergo with the stent procedure also remain at a big risk to get additional blockages in the coronary artery region. In this case, they should make sure to control both triglycerides and cholesterol via diet, medicine or through both to reduce the risk.

Stent consisting of a metal is permanent in nature and endothelial cells present in the human body grow on the metallic implant to incorporate the device within the arterial wall for remaining period of the life. However, simple placement of a stent device does not imply that it will effective forever to treat your problem. In some of the cases, stents may block again to create another problem called in-stent restenosis.

If this takes place, your stent artery will close and hence, a cardiologist may have to re-open it by using a balloon or may place an alternate stent within the blocked stent. In some of the cases, stent suffers fracture or may be pulled away from the wall of one’s artery to cause the problem of restenosis or stent thrombosis, along with the clotting of blood inside it.

Signs and symptoms associated with the problem of blocked stent are similar, as you may find in the blockage of coronary arteries. Reduced tolerance in physical exercises may be an indication of the stent blockage problem, but it often takes place from angina.

Angina refers to a crushing chest pain i.e. a pain, which radiated down across the left arm or the one that goes into jaws. It even involves the problem of sweating. In addition, the problem of angina also involves sweating and it may remain present in the form of headache. Patients suspected to have the problem of angina should make sure to look for cardiologists as soon as possible.

Especially, if you deal with crushing chest pain when your body remains at rest, you have the problem of unstable angina, which involves medical emergency. Assessment of coronary arteries and stents placed previously involve an exercise stress test. In this case, medical practitioners apply a venous injection categorized under a nuclear medicine to assess the oxygenation of the heart muscles at the time of physical exercise. Now, if patients deal with angiogram problem, doctors choose to remove as well as replace the respective blocked stent based on angiography.

One of the best ways, by which you may prevent re-blocking of a stent or prevent its progression, is to reduce the related risk factors, as much as possible. For instance, you should bring changes in your lifestyle, include a good exercise program and healthy diet options, undergo medical therapy on a regular basis and similar others.