Apex Cardiology, founded by Dr. Henry Lui, is at 327 Summar Drive. For an appointment, call 423-8200.
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Cardiologist involved in stent research
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| Cardiologist Dr. Henry Lui holds up the drugeluting stent which decreases recurrent blockage of the arteries after balloon angioplatsty. |
Jackson Cardiologist Henry Lui joined other researchers at hospitals and heart centers across the country to prove the effectiveness of the drug-coated stents. The results were printed in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
“We were one of the major centers to prove that the drug-coated stent is safe and reduces the need for follow-up angioplasty,” says Dr. Lui, who founded Apex Cardiology in Jackson and is board certified in cardiology and interventional cardiology. He was among those presenting their findings at the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans earlier this year.
Physicians have been doing balloon angioplasty since 1981 to clear blocked arteries and increase blood flow to the heart. About 30-40 percent of patients who have angioplasty get restenosis or recurrent blockage in the arteries, which requires follow-up angioplasty to clear the arteries again.
Coronary stents – small metal mesh tubes – were introduced in 1996 to keep the arteries open. “They helped a lot,” Dr. Lui says. “Complications associated with coronary balloon angioplasty decreased and the restenosis rate decreased to 20 to 25 percent.”
That was better, he says, but still too many patients were having to go through the risky angioplasty procedure again.
The drug-coated stent, approved by the FDA for the clinical study, has a special polymer coating on the stainless steel stent with the drug, paclitaxel, encoded in the polymer. The drug is slowly released over many months. The restenosis rate after nine months dropped to four percent.
The paclitaxel stent, when compared to another drug-eluting stent, also was better because it had the same results across the board, including in smaller arteries, in longer blockages and in diabetics, Dr. Lui says.
He and his patients were able to be a part of the study, he says, because of his contacts with doctors and other researchers across the county. “We also have a population base in West Tennessee where we can enroll a fair amount of patients in a study,” he says.
Coronary artery disease affects 13 million Americans. At first, patients with blocked arteries had one main option – bypass surgery. Balloon angioplasty gave physicians a second major alternative. With angioplasty, a balloon is expanded at the site of the blockage, compressing the blockage against the wall of the vessel to improve blood flow.
Says Dr. Lui, “the paclitaxel-eluting stent will allow us to successfully treat more patients with coronary artery disease.”