Injecting drug into coronary artery could reduce heart damage?

Administering an anticoagulant drug into the coronary artery implicated in a certain type of heart attack could reduce the amount of damage experienced by patients.

These are the findings of a study at Columbia University Medical Center and New York–Presbyterian Hospital.

Researchers infused a large dose of abciximab into the heart of patients undergoing a percutaneous coronary intervention and also receiving another anticoagulant.

This reduced the size of the damage to the heart muscle within 30 day - a result that did not occur when doctors used a catheter to remove the blood clot blocking the coronary artery.

There has been much debate over the merits of each treatment, with people questioning the results of studies on the grounds of how far patient selection, devices used and hypotheses affect findings.

However, abciximab is a drug long established as a successful way to treat clot formation in heart attack patients.

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