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Stents, tiny wire mesh tubes designed to shore up arteries, enjoy widespread use by surgeons. But these same devices in 2006 came under increasing scrutiny as emerging clinical trial results indicated that drug-eluting stents to treat heart disease, in particular, carry with them a potential risk for thrombosis, or blood clotting. The two manufacturers of drug-eluting stents currently on the U.S. market, Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific, scrambled to counter a growing public perception that their devices, the Cypher and the Taxus, might carry a rare but significant safety risk. Meanwhile, smaller manufacturers are learning from the struggles of their larger competitors and working to design devices that diminish that risk. The FDA in December held an important panel meeting to examine the available clinical evidence on drug-eluting stents, and concluded that wider patient populations will need to be studied to arrive at a decision on drug-eluting stent safety. The agency also may seek to curb off-label use of drug-eluting stents through stricter labeling for particular patient populations, such as those suffering from multivessel disease. Signs indicate that a sizeable percentage of physicians are backing away from drug-eluting stents in favor of the more traditional bare-metal stents — especially given the typical decline in rates of patient compliance with anti-clotting regimens the longer the drug-eluting devices remain implanted. As 2007 begins, analysts are watching to see how stent manufacturers will respond to the tide of negative publicity from these recent revelations.