I'll pass on the bypass.

• Author: Kaiser, Amanda
• Position: New coronary stent from Cook Inc

When it comes to your heart, it pays to do your homework.

Charles La Fara did. When La Fara was in the operating room at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, his doctors were having trouble. Cardiologists were trying to treat La Fara's severely blocked arteries by inserting coronary stents, small metal coils used to prop clogged arteries open. But after several attempts and two and a half hours, cardiologists couldn't insert the Johnson & Johnson stents into La Fara's narrow arteries.

As La Fara lay in pain, he remembered something he had read on the Internet about a new stent designed for narrow arteries, the GR II, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved only a month before.

Anxious to conclude the ordeal, he insisted that his doctors find the new stent and try it. Methodist Hospital didn't have any GR II stents, but the doctors were willing to make a special trip.

With La Fara waiting on the table, doctors drove to St. Vincent Hospital and returned with the GR II. The stents were in place on the first try.

Needless to say La Fara is a true believer. And thousands of other heart patients can be too.

Cook Inc. of Bloomington developed the GR II, which the FDA approved in May. The device allows cardiologists to prop open arteries with a diameter as small as 2.1 millimeters. Previously, cardiologists could only access arteries of 2.5 millimeters with stents available on the market. The improvement can save thousands of people from open-heart bypass surgery, which is the alternative method of treating clogged arteries.

A stent is a small stainless steel mesh contraption used to prop open an artery that has closed or seems likely to close after an angioplasty. The device is inserted in the artery using a balloon catheter.

Cook manufactured the first FDA-approved stent, the GR I, in the United States in 1993. Soon afterward, Johnson & Johnson became a market leader with its...