OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital is now offering a revolutionary procedure for certain heart patients. The hospital successfully treated its first patient using the AGENT™ Drug-Coated Balloon Wednesday, June 19. The device transfers a dose of medication to the artery to treat in-stent restenosis, a condition in which a stented artery has re-narrowed due to plaque or scar tissue. This technology is the first-of-its-kind to treat this condition.

“It is a gamechanger for this particular set of patients,” said Yohannes Bayissa, MD, the surgeon who performed the procedure. “Patients who’ve had stents before and are renarrowing again and again, this is one revolutionary way of treating the problem.”

Treatment options were limited for patients experiencing in-stent restenosis. According to Bayissa, it was a difficult condition to treat until now. “Treating this type of problem is very challenging because up until now, we have just been reballooning again and again, or we use what we call Brachytherapy, which is radiation inside the stent, and that has its own drawback as well,” said Bayissa. “The drug, which usually comes in a stent, is a medication to prevent this renarrrowing. Now we have it also on a balloon to deliver and coat the medication onto an old stent to prevent renarrowing.”

OhioHealth is currently the only system in the central Ohio region to have access to this technology. Bayissa said it’s just another way Mansfield Hospital is offering advanced cardiac care to its community.

“This cath lab does a lot of advanced procedures,” said Bayissa. “Over the last 4-5 years, OhioHealth helped us to bring advanced care locally and that includes valve replacements, left atrial appendage occlusion, and also blood clot removal from the lungs. This is just one more step this institute is taking to bring advanced treatment to the community.”

According to Arash Arshi, MD, OhioHealth’s system chief of interventional cardiology, the AGENT™ Drug-Coated Balloon is typically put in as an outpatient procedure, meaning patients can go home that same day. “The availability of the drug-coated balloon allows patients with coronary restenosis to receive effective treatment locally and at the same time as their initial procedure,” said Arshi. “Previously these patients would be scheduled at a later date to undergo Brachytherapy at Riverside Methodist Hospital.”

Submitted by OhioHealth.