Implant confirmed as safe treatment for unstable angina patients

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By Adele Waters

The growing population of patients with difficult-to-treat or refractory angina who have exhausted conventional treatments would benefit from coronary sinus reducer implantation as a standard treatment, research has confirmed.

That is the conclusion of a national audit of the procedure across 19 UK specialist centres.

The retrospective audit — thought to be the largest national audit of coronary sinus reducer (CSR) implantation practice to date — followed up 491 patients who had the minimally invasive procedure between 2014 and 2024 and found it was being performed successfully with a low complication rate.

CSR implantation involves inserting an hourglass-shaped stainless-steel mesh device inside the coronary sinus vein to narrow it.

This forces blood back to the heart muscle, thus relieving pain. It is used to treat severe chest pain that does not respond to medicines or standard bypass/stenting surgeries.

It is currently only available to patients on clinical trials, after previous NHS funding was withdrawn pending re-evaluation after the results of ongoing research.