Cook Medical has presented three-year data from Zilver PTX trial, which demonstrated 70.7% primary patency in the superficial femoral artery at 36 months using Paclitaxel-eluting stents.

The controlled, randomized trail compares to 49.1% patency for patients with percutaneous transluminal angioplasty and provisional bare metal stent placement in the 479-patient study.

In addition, the paclitaxel coating was shown to reduce the restenosis rate by 53 % in a head-to-head comparison of provisional paclitaxel-eluting versus bare metal stent placement.

Cook Medical peripheral intervention clinical division vice president and global leader Rob Lyles said, "These data from the largest clinical study ever conducted on peripheral stenting clearly show a sustained drug effect for paclitaxel-eluting stents versus bare metal stents after three-years."

Stanford University Medical School cardiothoracic surgery department professor and Stanford University Medical Center Cath/Angio Laboratories medical director Michael Dake have presented the study findings at the Vascular InterVentional Advances (VIVA) 2012 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, US.