{"id":309255,"date":"2010-02-11T18:36:37","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T23:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/02\/11\/health-blog-primer-whats-a-stent\/"},"modified":"2010-02-11T18:36:37","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T23:36:37","slug":"health-blog-primer-what%e2%80%99s-a-stent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/309255","title":{"rendered":"Health Blog Primer: What\u2019s a Stent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stent\"Bill Clinton was admitted to the hospital for chest pain today and had two stents<\/a> placed in one of the arteries around his heart.<\/p>\n

Here’s what that means:<\/p>\n

A stent<\/a> is a wire mesh tube that’s used to prop open an artery. That’s a stent in the picture.<\/p>\n

Stents are often used for patients with unstable angina<\/a> — sudden chest pain that can be a prelude to a heart attack. <\/p>\n

In a typical procedure, doctors start by making a small incision in the patient’s groin, then threading a catheter through the incision and up into a clogged artery near the heart. Then they perform a procedure called angioplasty, using a tiny balloon to clear away plaque that’s clogging up the artery. Then the doctors run the stent through the catheter and into section of the artery that was just de-gunked.<\/p>\n

The stent reduces the risk that the artery will re-close. Some stents are coated with a drug, to further reduce that risk. <\/p>\n

There’s been a lot of discussion over the past few years about whether stents are overused, particularly for patients with chronic chest pain. For more on that subject see this front-page story<\/a> from this morning’s WSJ.<\/p>\n

Image via Bloomberg News<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Clinton was admitted to the hospital for chest pain today and had two stents placed in one of the arteries around his heart. Here’s what that means: A stent is a wire mesh tube that’s used to prop open an artery. That’s a stent in the picture. Stents are often used for patients with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}