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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pancho Villa who wrote (6833)	4/13/1998 10:43:00 AM
From: Lazlo Pierce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Pancho, was it you or Roger who was short AVEI? This from the street.com ******** Herb on TheStreet: A Dose of Reality for the Stent-o-Maniacs? Bad News for Baan? By Herb Greenberg Senior Columnist 4/13/98 8:37 AM ET Not that anybody really cares, but: Three prominent heart surgeons, writing in a just-published report in Circulation, a medical journal, suggest docs may have become too aggressive in their use of stents to hold open cardiac arteries that have been unclogged with angioplasty. The Mayo Clinic's Craig Narins and David Holmes, and Eric Topol of the Cleveland Clinic, said their own studies show that stents shouldn't automatically be used as part of an angioplasty. Turns out many studies that show stents prevent reclogging may not mirror the population of the real world, and as a result "the relative advantages of stent implementation may be significantly'' diminished. The report comes as stent mania continues to work its magic on Wall Street, especially with the stocks of Arterial Vascular Engineering (AVEI:Nasdaq), Guidant (GDT:NYSE) and, to a lesser extent, Boston Scientific (BSX:NYSE), which have all ballooned. There's little doubt stents have improved the treatment of heart disease. But both Wall Street and the medical community have been known to get ahead of themselves, and if the findings of these docs have any influence, stents may be the next product to get hit with a dose of reality. The key word is "may,'' because it's not uncommon for respected docs to pen cautionary articles on new treatments, and stents already are used in an estimated 80% to 90% of all angioplasties. Just as angioplasty has revolutionized the treatment of heart disease, stents have revolutionized the results of angioplasty. Or so says much of the data that already have been collected. But the docs writing in Circulation say their own studies show more research should still be done to determine whether routine stenting is necessary. They're especially concerned about what happens when an artery that has been propped open with a stent recloses at the site of the stent. They write that arteries that reclog at the site of the stent have a 30% to 57% chance of repeated recloggings at the site of the original stent. (And removal of a clogged stent apparently isn't a piece of cake -- so to speak.) As a result, they say the "initial benefits of stent implantation may be less dramatic'' than original studies. They cite one study, in particular, that shows little difference in the reclogging rate in patients who automatically received a stent and those who didn't. They strongly suggested that docs should be able to identify patients, immediately after an angioplasty, who wouldn't reclog without the stent. It's uncertain whether the report will cause insurers to start questioning routine stenting (at an average cost of $1,600 for the first stent). Even if they don't, however, stent prices are expected to start deflating rapidly on their own by early next year, thanks to increased competition. That, alone, could cause the stocks of stent makers to suffer a setback. If at the same time docs for some reason decide to use fewer stents, the prognosis for investors could be a financial version of code blue.