Cardiovascular disease is a group of heart and blood vessel disorders. Coronary artery disease is one of these disorders. It occurs when the arteries supplying blood to the heart become narrowed because of built-up plaque, blocking blood flow to the heart and can result in a heart attack.

In a nutshell, heart stent patients are diagnosed with coronary artery disease. When a patient opts for a stent procedure, it helps to manage the symptoms and reduces the risk of complications related to cardiovascular disease.

In this article, we will walk you through how the University of Maryland Medical Centre (UMMC) offered genetic testing as the standard of care to improve outcomes for heart stent patients.

UMMC Groundbreaking Feat to Improve Outcome for Stent Patients

Heart stents (also known as coronary stents) are devices placed in the coronary artery to treat a blockage. Besides opening blockage, coronary stents restore blood flow to the heart.

In 2017, UMMC started offering a simple genetic test to patients undergoing the stent procedure. This is to determine whether they (or not) have a genetic deficiency affecting how they respond to drugs preventing blood clots. The patients are given clopidogrel to prevent recurring cardiovascular events after the stent procedure.

UMMC performed the test by analyzing a patient’s DNA which was isolated from the blood sample. They identified a variation in the CYP2C19 gene affecting the body’s ability to activate the drug. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine discovered that genetic testing helps medical practitioners recognize a more effective medication for stent patients, which reduces the risk of recurrent cardiac events, just need to visit cardiocarellc.com once for more update.

Over 50% of patients with the deficiency were given a different and more effective medication. Drawing from generic data, it’s hard not to see a decline in the rate of deaths, heart attacks, or stroke by nearly half compared to patients who keep taking clopidogrel.

As part of the clinical study, the genetic test is the standard of care at UMMC for patients receiving stent procedures after a heart attack or several episodes of artery blockage as they are at the highest risk of having a subsequent event of cardiovascular disease.

In his words, Mark R. Vasely, MD, an associate professor of medicine at UM SOM and an interventional cardiologist at UMMC  asserted that “This is a true personalized medicine initiative. The test provides the ability to optimize therapy for a specific patient by helping us tailor our treatment based on the patient’s unique genetic profile.

An alternative medication, ticagrelor, has been shown in other studies to be more effective in preventing future events like heart attacks. However, ticagrelor is less reliably taken by patients because it is significantly more expensive and less well-tolerated than clopidogrel,” Dr. Vesely says. “The genetic test helps us determine which patients are likely to receive sufficient protection from clopidogrel and thus avoid the extra cost and side effects.”

Final Thoughts

While the UMMC’s astonishing move to improve the outcome of stent patients is applaudable, one of the preventive measures for cardiovascular diseases is undergoing a risk assessment.

A cardiovascular risk assessment is essential for preventing heart disease. It lets you identify the chances of developing a heart complication in the future based on the evaluations of factors responsible for heart diseases.