- My name is Michael Maeng. I'm an Interventional Cardiologist at Aarhus University Hospital, in Denmark. And I'm here to talk about the SORT-OUT VIII trial, with five years follow up.

Aim of This Study

The aim of the study is to compare two drug-eluting stents which both have bioabsorbable polymers. The first one is the synergy stent which is an everolimus eluting, drug-eluting stent. And the other one is the BioMatrix NeoFlex stent which eludes biolimus.

Study Design and Patient Population

The study design is an all-comer trial. It means that there were very few exclusion and inclusion criteria. Basically, we included all patients who were going to have a stent and who we thought would survive the first year. So we included two thousand seven hundred and sixty four patients, and they were randomised one to one to these two drug-eluting stents.

Key Findings

The key findings the study is that in synergy everolimus-eluting stent was non-inferior to the biolimus-eluting BioMatrix Neoflex stent at five years follow up. And importantly a key secondary endpoint was very late stent thrombosis and we saw very few events at one to five year follow up for both stent types.

Take-Home Messages

The take home message from this study is that both stent types that we examine in this study had very good results and the two stents were non-inferior to each other. So both stents can be used in our daily clinic practice and have very low rates of very late events, especially very late stent thrombosis.

Further Research Required and Next Steps

The future in, in this field is to make sure that the new stent types that comes out also have very low low rates of very late events and and have good results also in the long term. But I think another component in the future is to examine if these stents can also have very good results with lower time periods with dual antiplatelet therapy, like can we reduce the duration of dual antiplatelet therapy to six months or three months in, in with these stent types that will be the future questions.