Clinical outcome of patients with chronic total occlusion treated with drug-eluting stents

Background: There is limited evidence on the medium-term prognosis of patients with chronic total occlusion successfully treated with drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation. Methods: We compared the medium-term outcome of 111 patients with chronic total occlusion (CTO) successfully treated with implantation of sirolimus- or paclitaxel-eluting stents versus 112 patients treated with bare metal stents. Results: During an overall follow-up period of 18 months, the composite endpoint of death, myocardial infarction or target lesion revascularization was significantly lower in the drug-eluting stent than in the bare metal stent group: 8.1% vs. 21.6%, respectively (p=0.005). The difference was due to the reduction of target lesion revascularization with DES compared to bare metal stents: 3.6% vs. 18.9%, respectively (p < 0.001). The Cox proportional hazards model identified DES as an independent predictor of adverse cardiac events (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.16; 95% confidence interval 0.05 to 0.52, p=0.002). Conclusions: During medium-term follow-up use of DES is associated with improved outcome compared to use of bare metal stents in patients with CTO. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.