When we look at the intervention trials now, women are still older and have more comorbid conditions, particularly high blood pressure, diabetes and the like. But we're doing better now with the intervention because we are more capable of managing those conditions. This large, multicenter, randomized trial demonstrated that the incidence of thrombosis after stent placement was significantly lower in patients who had received aspirin and ticlopidine compared to those that received aspirin and coumarin or aspirin alone. Let's discuss that a bit. The groin complication rate is higher for women in all of the intervention studies, but we don't understand the reason for this.
Women have more calcified vessels.
For, example, we have some concern when using some of the collagen plugs, like the Angioseal. If you're putting those devices into a smaller vessel, we need to really know that we're not increasing the risk of vessel obstruction. We have seen a fair number of those over at Scripps. If you're looking at a closure device like the Perclose, the data we have at Scripps suggests that women do equally as well as men. I think the jury is still out on the use of closure devices in men versus women.