OBJECTIVES: In Korea, cardiovascular disease is a major leading cause of death. Since Drug Eluting Stents were included in the reimbursement list in 2004, the utilization has been rapidly increased. The aim of this study was to analyze DES utilization pattern by comparison between DES and BMS. METHODS: Korea Health Insurance claim data was used for understanding a tendency of utilization of coronary stents. To analyze the change, both case-based and person-based data were employed between 2004 and 2007. RESULTS: All cases were 132,279. Among them, 109,721 used DES, while 22,558 used BMS. In 2004, 58.3% of whole cases of coronary stents were used DES, and rate of this has been rapidly increased by 93.4% in 2007. Over 95% of cases performed operations in medical organizations of general hospital level. This result was consistent by year. Admission route for stent procedure was divided into 2 groups, cases through ER and outpatient. The percentage of cases through ER was higher than outpatients among DES. Since DES included in the reimbursement list, 112,547 patients were treated using DES or BMS. The mean age of the patients was 62.7(SD 10.9) at first treatment and 65.3% was male. A total of 83.9% was treated once or over without regard to stent type. Of all patients, 71.4% were used DES, while 12.5% were used BMS once. 16.1% were used more than once regardless of target vessel or lesion. CONCLUSIONS: DES has been known to superior in the restenosis and death rate. But recently studies about adverse effects(eg. stent thrombosis) have been published. So far, there is no overall agreement as to the usefulness of DES. In Korea, the expenditure caused by DES is the highest of whole medical material expenditure. The studies dealing with outcome and effectiveness of DES that reflects Korean medical environment should be needed.