Other sites include the University of Maryland, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and Duke University. The UF team includes Dr. Robert Zlotecki, an assistant professor of medicine in the department of radiation oncology, and registered nurses Kurt Malphurs and Gwen Thomas, among others. Patients undergoing angioplasty who elect to participate are randomly assigned to undergo either traditional angioplasty or angioplasty plus radiation therapy. Neither they nor their physicians will know which treatment they received until after the study is completed. About 1,200 participants will be tracked nationwide.
Physicians administer the radiation through a device that contains radioactive pellets.
The pellets radiate the vessel from inside the catheter for two to five minutes and never come in direct contact with tissue. A second study of 900 patients will involve radiation therapy to treat patients who have had stents placed in their coronary arteries and then developed restenosis inside the stent, said interventional cardiologist Dr. Karen Smith, an assistant professor of medicine at UF's College of Medicine. After eight months, participants in both studies will undergo cardiac catheterization so physicians can determine whether the treated vessel has remained open.