Boston Scientific says J&J Stent Also Has Clot Risk

In the ongoing battle between medical device rivals, Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific, Boston Scientific sent out another shot at the New Brunswick, NJ-based medical device over stents.

The Natick, MA-based medical device manufacturer stated that an independent analysis shows similar risks of blood clots in patients receiving Johnson & Johnson’s Cypher stent and Boston Scientific Corp.’s Taxus stent.

Nearly 6 million heart patients worldwide have received drug-eluting stents to treat clogged heart arteries, an advance over bare-metal devices that were the prior standard of care.

But the recent analyses have raised concerns among physicians about the risk of potentially fatal blood clots developing long after the small wire-mesh tubes are inserted, causing sales of the popular treatments to slow.

Boston Scientific, which in September confirmed a small but heightened risk of blood clots with its drug-eluting stent, said the new meta-analysis showed a statistically significant risk of late-forming blood clots in the J&J stent as well.

J&J has said four-year data showed no difference in thrombosis rates for its Cypher stent vs. bare metal.

The latest analysis, by Dr. Gregg Stone, professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, was presented at a Boston Scientific-sponsored symposium in conjunction with a cardiology meeting in Washington, D.C.