Review of NICE Technology Appraisal Guidance No 152; drug-eluting stents (DES) for the treatment of coronary artery disease (part review of TA71)

As you may be aware the planned date for review of the above guidance is April 2009.

This is the date at which the Institute decides whether sufficient new evidence has emerged for the Appraisal Committee to undertake an appraisal to updated the existing guidance.

The Institute has carried out a search for information relevant to this appraisal, and believes that it is appropriate for the review to go ahead. 

NICE technology appraisal guidance no 71 considered only three devices (Taxus, Cypher and Dexamet) because at the time of publication, these were the only DESs that had been granted Conformité Européene (CE) marking for use within EU countries. Eight additional DESs had been included in guidance no 152 (Axxion, CoStar, Taxus & Taxus Liberté, Cypher & Cypher Select, Endeavor, Janus, Xience V, Yukon). Since the previous systematic review was conducted in 2005 there have been numerous studies published for the stents included in guidance 152 that have longer follow-ups and more head to head trails of DES. There are also several new stents that are now available, although data on these may be limited.

In order to be completely confident that this is appropriate, we are asking   consultees and commentators with an interest in this topic, to inform us of any evidence which would suggest that an earlier review would be beneficial.  We would particularly like to be made aware of timelines around on-going research, etc. which might affect the scheduling of this review should we go ahead with the proposal following this consultation. 

Please note all comments received will be published on the Institute’s website when a decision has been made.

• A full list of the organisations contacted for this review

6 May 2009