Elkhart General Hospital first
in Indiana to implant naturallyElkhart General Hospital first in Indiana to implant naturally dissolving heart stent.

You don’t always need a permanent implant to treat a temporary problem. Traditional metallic stents were once considered revolutionary by cardiologists performing balloon angioplasty on patients with coronary heart disease. A stent expands and permanently adheres to the artery wall so the patient can avoid open heart surgery. But just like a cast isn’t needed after a broken bone heals, a new dissolvable stent made of material similar to dissolving sutures allows the artery to pulse and flex naturally and disappears completely once it has done its job.

In late July, the interventional cardiology team at Elkhart General Hospital, led by Donald R. Westerhausen, Jr., MD, was the first in Indiana to implant the new, FDA-approved Absorb GT1 Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold in a female patient in her 60s with symptomatic coronary heart disease.

Elkhart General is one of only three hospitals in the state implanting the new device because it has been at the forefront of the new technology through years of clinical studies.

Westerhausen, President of the Midwest Cardiovascular Research and Education Foundation and Director of the Cardiology Catheterization Laboratory at Elkhart General Hospital, was thrilled to be selected to participate in studies involving the dissolvable stent because the device promotes healing of the treated artery segment without permanent implantation.

“To be one of the 140 hospitals in the country to get into these studies was a big deal for us,” Westerhausen said. The innovative plastic scaffold, manufactured by California- based Abbott Vascular, starts to break down several months after implantation and completely dissolves within two to three years. Only tiny metallic markers remain in the artery to enable a  physician to see where the device was placed.

“It has the opportunity to promote healing and restore the vessel
to its natural state. This could potentially be the ‘gold standard’
in treating non-calcified arteries interventionally in the future,”
Westerhausen said. “And this technology is going to be useful in
other areas like certain areas of the leg that are unstentable."

dissolving heart stent.