Why in News:

• National Pharmaceutical pricing authority has approved a hike in the price of coronary stents.

What is a stent?

• A stent is a tiny expandable metal scaffold inserted in the narrowed or weak arteries. The process of placing a stent in the artery is called angioplasty. A coronary artery stent is a small, metal mesh tube that expands inside a coronary artery. A stent is often placed during or immediately after angioplasty. It helps prevent the artery from closing up again.

Drug eluting stent:

• A drug-eluting stent has medicine embedded in it that helps prevent the artery from closing in the long term. It is often preferred over bare-metal stents because the latter carry a higher risk of restenosis, the growth of tissue into the stent resulting in vessel narrowing.

Bare Metal stent:

• Bare-metal stent is a stent without a coating or covering often made of stainless steel. More
• recent stents (‘2nd generation’) use cobalt chromium alloy.
• National pharmaceutical pricing authority:
• NPPA is an independent body under Department of Pharmaceuticals under the Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers.

Functions of NPPA:

• Fix/revise the controlled bulk drugs prices and formulations, enforce prices and availability of the medicines under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 1995/2013,
• recover amounts overcharged by manufacturers for the controlled drugs from the consumers
• monitor the prices of decontrolled drugs in order to keep them at reasonable levels. NPPA fixes ceiling price of essential medicines that are listed in Schedule I of DPCO, 2013 Medicines that are not under price control, manufacturers are allowed to increase the maximum retail price by 10% annually.