Summary
It was the purpose of this study to assess the effect of thrombus aspiration (TA)
during primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) on reperfusion and clinical
outcome in a real-world STEMI population. The decision to use TA (Export catheter,
Medtronic) was at the discretion of the treating cardiologist. The primary endpoint
was mortality at short (in-hospital) and long term (one year) follow-up. Secondary
end points were post-PCI TIMI flow, residual ST deviation and enzymatic infarct size.
Cox proportional hazard models (propensity-weighted) and logistic regression analysis
were used to adjust for known covariates, associated with mortality. We performed
a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data on 2,552 consecutive PPCI-treated
STEMI patients between 2007 and 2010. Use of TA increased from 6.9% in 2007 to 62.2%
in 2010 (p<0.001). TA was performed in 899 patients (35.2%). In-hospital and one-year
mortality rates were 3.0% and 6.0%, respectively, in the TA group and 3.5% and 7.6%
in the no- TA group. After multivariate analysis, TA was not significantly associated
with in-hospital mortality (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 0.70; 95% confidence interval
[CI]: 0.33–1.49, p=0.36) nor one year mortality (adjusted hazard ratio [HR]: 0.75,
95%CI: 0.47–1.20, p=0.23) or cardiac mortality (HR: 0.81; 95%CI: 0.45–1.46, p=0.49).
After matching on the propensity score, the HR in the TA group for one year mortality
was 0.70 (95%CI: 0.41–1.20, p=0.19) and for one-year cardiac mortality 0.70 (95%CI:
0.36–1.34, p=0.28). In conclusion, no significant relationship of TA with one of the
secondary end points was found. The use of TA increased over the last years but clinical
outcome was similar in both groups (TA vs no-TA) in this large cohort of real-world,
unselected STEMI patients.
Keywords
Thrombus aspiration - glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors - ST-elevation myocardial infarction
- primary percutaneous coronary intervention
