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- According to the European Society of Cardiology there has been an increase in the life expectancy at the age of 65 of the European population from 15.0 to 17.0 years in the years since 1980. In the elderly, up to 50% of deaths are caused by cardiovascular diseases, the majority accounted for by coronary artery disease. The most effective treatment for obstructive coronary disease is percutaneous intervention with coronary stenting and fuelled by the increasing disease burden there has been a rapid increase in the number of percutaneous coronary intervention procedures in Europe from 184,000 in 1992 to 885,000 in 2004. If the rate of progression remains constant, the projected number of coronary intervention procedures per annum will be about 1.5 million by 2010, with a stenting rate of close to 100%. The principal safety issue with current coronary stenting procedures is late stent thrombosis which, with a case mortality rate approaching 50%, makes this problem a very significant European health issue. The PRESTIGE project will result in significant improvement in prediction and prevention of late stent thrombosis by providing novel strategies that causally impede incident events without increasing the overall risk of bleeding. These goals will be achieved by a multidisciplinary consortium formed by world-leading EU-based specialists covering the requisite scientific skills and experience. Since the first drug-eluting stent was introduced in 2002 the growth of this sector has been explosive. Forecasts predicted the potential for this market segment to exceed €4.6 billion by 2009. The economic impact of this very ambitious project will be to provide the European health industries with novel stent products and new imaging technologies to identify patients at-risk, as well as amended European treatment guidelines. The social impact will be, amongst others, a tremendous cost reduction for the public and private health insurance systems all over Europe.