lower rates of death or myocardial infarction than treatment with a drug-eluting stent. Patients undergoing CABG also had lower rates of repeat revascularization. Two major randomized controlled trials comparing CABG and DES are either completed or ongoing, and have published results - Synergy Between Percutaneous Coronary Intervention With Taxus and Cardiac Surgery (SYNTAX) and Future Revascularization Evaluation in Patients With Diabetes Mellitus—Optimal Management of Multivessel Disease (FREEDOM). The five-year follow-up results of SYNTAX showed, depending on the complexity of coronary vessel disease, PCI was either equally effective or inferior to CABG. Similarly, results from the FREEDOM trial published after five years showed CABG to be superior to PCI in reducing rates of death and myocardial infarction. Both trials found either increased or insignificantly different rates of stroke with CABG as compared to PCI. The registries of the nonrandomized patients screened for these trials may provide as many robust data regarding revascularization outcomes as the randomized analysis. Other studies, including the ARTS II registry, suggest drug-eluting stenting is not inferior to coronary bypass for the treatment of multiple-vessel coronary disease. The ARTS II registry compared a cohort of patients treated with multiple-vessel stenting with DES, to the historical CABG cohort in the ARTS I trial (itself a randomized comparison between multiple-vessel bare-metal stenting vs. CABG.) At three-year follow-up, major adverse cardiac events were comparable between the ARTS II DES group and the ARTS I CABG group. Reintervention was lower in the ARTS I CABG group. In all comparison studies of stenting vs. bypass surgery, it is worth noting that only a small minority of patients with multiple-vessel coronary disease have been eligible for inclusion in the studies, and for most patients, clinical judgement by experienced operators suggest one or the other approach is preferred. Design Drug-eluting stents generally consist of three parts - the stent platform, a polymer coating that binds the drug to the stent and releases the drug, and the drug itself. The stent platform itself is an expandable framework, generally with an elaborate mesh-like design to allow expansion, flexibility, and in some cases the ability to make or enlarge side openings for side vessels. The first DES were stainless steel alloys composed of iron, nickel, and chromium and were based on existing bare metal stents. These stents were hard to visualize with medical imaging, posed a risk of causing allergic responses, and were difficult to deliver. Subsequent new