A follow-up trial looks at drugs which protect the heart patient in the six months after angioplasty.

Tirofiban and abciximab are both drugs known as platelet glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors, whose role is to stop blood platelets clumping together to form a blood clot. The two drugs differ slightly in the way they act. They have been used recently to help patients undergoing angioplasty - a procedure which opens up blocked coronary arteries. With the inhibitor drugs, the risk of clotting during or after angioplasty is reduced and this reduces the risk of death or further heart attack.

A previous study, by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in the US, suggested that abciximab was slightly better at protecting the patient during angioplasty and during the 30 days after the operation. Now a follow-up suggests there's very little to choose between the two six months on. At six months, the death rate for those on tirofiban was 14.8 per cent and 14.3 per cent for those on abciximab.

Source

Lancet 3rd August 2002