Does the new generation of drug-eluting stents render bare metal stents obsolete?

The development of bare metal coronary stents revolutionized the treatment of coronary artery disease by reducing rates of acute vessel closure and restenosis associated with balloon angioplasty. However, bare metal stents (BMS) resulted in high rates of restenosis and led to the development of drug-eluting stents (DES). Those first-generation DES were followed by successive generations of DES that included improvements, such as biodegradable and more biocompatible polymers. Despite the superiority of the current DES compared to BMS, a subset of patients still receives BMS. The following paper reviews the literature comparing the safety and efficacy of newer generation DES to BMS in such patients and ultimately challenges the use of BMS in contemporary current DES era.