Review of NICE Technology Appraisal Guidance No.152; Drug-eluting stents for the treatment of coronary artery disease

Proposal to update the existing guidance within a Clinical Guideline

As you may be aware the planned date for review of the above guidance was June 2012.  The review was previously deferred to allow time to gather further information.

The Institute has concluded that there is no strong evidence available that is likely to lead to an update to the existing recommendations.  A comparison between the available stents would not be possible based on the currently available evidence, and a recommendation based on local costs remains appropriate.

It is however acknowledged that further assessment of these technologies, especially the stents that have become available since the publication of TA152 might be helpful for clinicians.  As a technology appraisal is not the most suitable context for this to take place, it is proposed that TA152 should be updated in a forthcoming clinical guideline.

The existing clinical guidelines for STEMI (CG167) and NSTEMI (CG94) are due to be updated.  The reviews of these guidelines will begin in July 2015 and September 2015 respectively.  TA152 should therefore be updated in these clinical guidelines.

If, after CG137 and CG94 have been updated any of the recommendations of TA152 are changed then these recommendations will be withdrawn on publication of the new clinical guidelines.  If any recommendations remain the same, then TA152 (in whole or in part) will remain on the static list and will continue to exist alongside the guideline.

In order to be completely confident that this is appropriate, we are asking all relevant consultees and commentators, to inform us of any evidence which will help us decide the best way to update this guidance.  Please see appendix A for a full list of the organisations we have contacted. 

April 2014

Attachments