Simple risk stratification at admission to identify patients with reduced mortality from primary angioplasty

Background - Randomized trials comparing fibrinolysis with primary angioplasty for acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction have demonstrated a beneficial effect of primary angioplasty on the combined end point of death, reinfarction, and disabling stroke but not on all-cause death. Identifying a patient group with reduced mortality from an invasive strategy would be important for early triage. The Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) risk score is a simple validated integer score that makes it possible to identify high-risk patients on admission to hospital. We hypothesized that a high-risk group might have a reduced mortality with an invasive strategy. Methods and Results - We classified 1527 patients from the Danish Multicenter Randomized Study on Fibrinolytic Therapy Versus Acute Coronary Angioplasty in Acute Myocardial Infarction ( DANAMI-2) trial with information for all variables necessary for calculating the TIMI risk score as low risk ( TIMI risk score, 0 to 4) or high risk ( TIMI risk score >= 5) and investigated the effect of primary angioplasty versus fibrinolysis on mortality and morbidity in the 2 groups. Follow- up was 3 years. We classified 1134 patients as low risk and 393 as high risk. There was a significant interaction between risk status and effect of primary angioplasty ( P = 0.008). In the low-risk group, there was no difference in mortality ( primary angioplasty, 8.0%; fibrinolysis, 5.6%; P = 0.11); in the high-risk group, there was a significant reduction in mortality with primary angioplasty ( 25.3% versus 36.2%; P = 0.02). Conclusions - Risk stratification at admission based on the TIMI risk score identifies a group of high-risk patients who have a significantly reduced mortality with an invasive strategy of primary angioplasty.