Drug-eluting stents may be more effective than bare-metal stents for ACS

The evidence suggests drug-eluting stents might lead to fewer serious adverse events (particularly repeat balloon angioplasty) compared with bare-metal stents without increasing the risk of all-cause mortality or major cardiovascular events. However, trial sequential analysis (to control the risk of cumulative meta-analysis producing random error due to sparse data and multiple testing of accumulating data) showed there was not, currently, enough information to assess a risk ratio reduction of 10% for all-cause mortality, major cardiovascular events, cardiovascular mortality or myocardial infarction. There were no data on quality of life or angina.