Patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases may get relief from purchasing costly stents as the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority is likely to fix the prices of coronary stents soon. The move is aimed at making costly life saving medical devices more affordable for patients suffering from heart diseases. The decision in this regard has been initiated on the basis of a Health Ministry’s notification issued in November 2022 under which coronary stents were included in the National List of Essential Medicine.
As per the notification, the government had constituted a Standing National Committee on Medicine in 2018 to review the national list of essential medicines. On the basis of the panel’s recommendation, two types of coronary stents such as bare metal stents and drug eluting stents, which include metallic DES and bioresorbable vascular scaffold/biodegradable stents, were included in the essential medicine list.
According to a senior government official, several rounds of consultation have already been done with device manufacturers and their associations to fix the ceiling prices of stents of all categories. Given that cardiovascular diseases are the world’s leading cause of death and claim as many as 17.9 million lives each year across the globe, price fixation of stents would help in making it affordable and save the lives of poor as India accounts for about 60 per cent of the world’s heart disease burden. Industry experts have pointed that price capping may affect the quality of life saving device as since 2017, when the government had announced a reduction in the prices of coronary stents for the first time, some of coronary stents such as Abbott’s Xience Alpine and Absorb Boston Scientifics’ – Synergy have been withdrawn from the Indian market.
“Following the global pandemic, patients are more conscious and want to understand their line of treatment prior to undergoing a surgery for the long-term outcomes and trade-offs. When patients would ask for a particular stent, the healthcare facilities may face problems in fulfilling patients’ demand,” said Dr. Viveka Kumar.