Medication helps before and after angioplasty

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

The drug clopidogrel helps patients avoid heart attack or stroke when they have an angioplasty.
For patients with heart problems, angioplasty is an important procedure which can open up the blocked vessels serving the heart. However, angioplasty can have the side effect of causing blood clotting, so anti-platelet therapy including clopidogrel is often used around the procedure.

In a new study, a team at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that the timing of clopidogrel is significant. In a group of 1,863 patients, some were pre-treated with clopidogrel and some were not. Those who did get clopidogrel before their angioplasty had a 46 per cent reduced risk of having heart attack or stroke after the procedure. Currently, it's the practice to give clopidogrel at the time of angioplasty. This study suggest that giving it before the procedure could be more beneficial.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 14th September 2005 Volume 294 pages 1224-1232