NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Compared to bare metal stent implantation, patients with acute myocardial infarction and failed thrombolysis who undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), do no better with drug-eluting stents, Italian researchers report in a December 13th on-line paper in the American Journal of Cardiology.
Dr. Francesco De Felice told Reuters Health by email “Rescue percutaneous coronary intervention is useful in patients with acute myocardial infarction and failed thrombolysis.”
“Although drug eluting-stents are effective in reducing restenosis compared to bare metal stents in many clinical scenarios,” he added, “no data are available on the comparison of the clinical outcomes between the 2 types of stents in patients treated with rescue angioplasty.”
To investigate, Dr. De Felice and colleagues at S. Camillo-Forlanini Hospital, Rome followed 311 patients with ST-segment elevation acute MI and evidence of failed fibrinolysis. All underwent successful revascularization with drug-eluting or bare metal stents.
At one year, 92.5% of the drug-eluting group was free of major cardiovascular events, consisting of death, recurrent MI, and target vessel revascularization. The corresponding proportion in the bare metal group was 89.2%. The difference wasn
