Procedural and One-Year Clinical Outcomes of Long 48 mm Xience Xpedition Everolimus-Eluting Stent in Complex Long Diffuse Coronary Artery Lesions

Background and Objectives. Long 48 mm drug-eluting stents (DES) used to treat long coronary lesions decreases the number of stents needed and avoids stent overlapping. Disadvantages include difficulty in delivery and size discrepancy between proximal and distal stent landing zones. The present study analyzed the rate of procedural, immediate angiographic, and one-year clinical outcomes of long diffuse coronary artery lesions treated with 48 mm everolimus-eluting stents (EES) and compared the clinical outcomes with multiple overlapping DES. Methods. This retrospective analysis included 213 patients with 228 lesions treated with at least one 48 mm EES at 2 hospitals in Taiwan. Results. About 40.4% of the lesions had moderate-severe calcification and 20.2% had acute angulation. The mean lesion length was 49.2 +/- 18.1 mm. In 161 lesions requiring a single 48 mm EES, 67.1% had a discrepancy between proximal and distal reference diameter of >= 0.5 mm and 36% had a discrepancy of >= 1.0 mm. The procedural success rate was 98.6%. Target-vessel failure (TVF) rate at 1 year was 4.2%. Cardiac death occurred in three patients. The rates of target-vessel myocardial infarction (TV-MI), target-vessel revascularization (TVR) and definite/ probable stent thrombosis were 1.4%, 3.3%, and 0.9%, respectively. After adjusting patient variables by propensity score matching, no significant difference was found for cardiac death, TVF, TV-MI, and clinically driven TVR. Conclusion. Use of 48 mm EES to treat long coronary lesions in clinically and anatomically complex patients is safe and effective. In the propensity score-matched analysis, the 48 mm EES and multiple stents have comparable clinical outcomes.

Automated summary

The use of 48 mm drug-eluting stents for the treatment of long coronary lesions is safe and effective. It reduces the number of stents required and avoids stent overlapping.