Five-year clinical outcome of the Nobori drug-eluting coronary stent system in the treatment of patients with coronary artery disease: Final results of the NOBORI 1 trial

Aims: To assess the safety and performance of the Nobori drug-eluting stent with biodegradable polymer versus the TAXUS drug-eluting stent with permanent polymer, in the treatment of patients with de novo coronary artery lesions. Methods and results: NOBORI 1 was a multicentre, randomised (2:1), prospective, controlled, clinical trial which enrolled 363 patients (238 Nobori and 125 TAXUS) with up to two de novo lesions in two epicardial vessels. The primary endpoint was in-stent late loss at nine months, while secondary endpoints included safety and efficacy up to five years. At five years, clinical data were available for 350 patients (96%). There were no differences in the composite of death and myocardial infarction (10.9% vs. 11.2%) and target lesion failure (9.2% and 10.4%), while ischaemia- and non-ischaemia-driven target lesion revascularisations were less frequent in the Nobori (6.3%) than in the TAXUS arm (16.0%). The rates of stent thrombosis (definite and probable according to the ARC definitions) were 0.0% and 3.2%, in the Nobori and TAXUS stents, respectively (p=0.014). Conclusions: Five years after implantation, the Nobori DES resulted in durable treatment effects with very low TLR and no stent thrombosis. The study was not powered to assess the differences in clinical endpoints. These data are hypothesis-generating.