The favorable results in diabetic patients may be important, because diabetic patients are far more likely than non-diabetics to experience restenosis following angioplasty and stenting with bare-metal stents. Given that diabetic patients are expected to represent up to 40 percent of coronary interventions, the TAXUS drug-eluting stent technology could provide a critical treatment option for this population.

TAXUS IV Clinical Trial
The TAXUS IV study enrolled 1,326 patients at 73 sites in the United States. It compared the benefits to patients receiving a TAXUS paclitaxel-eluting stent with those receiving a bare-metal control stent. The results at nine months were impressive: