Objective: To assess the safety and efficacy of direct stenting using the sirolimus-eluting BX Velocitytrade mark stent in patients with coronary lesions.
Background: Although direct coronary stenting has become a widespread practice, there have been no systematic assessments of direct stenting with drug-eluting stents.
Methods: Total of 225 patients with identical inclusion and exclusion criteria as the original SIRIUS trial were enrolled in this prospective single-arm study. They were compared in a no-inferiority design with 412 similar patients from the SIRIUS trial who had sirolimus-eluting stents deployed after predilatation and were preassigned to angiographic follow-up evaluation.
Results: Direct stenting was successful in 85.8% of the patients. Compared with the predilatation group, direct stenting was associated with shorter median procedure duration (33 min vs. 45 min, P < 0.001). Angiographic follow-up at 8 months revealed similar late loss (in-stent-0.19 +/- 0.47 mm vs. 0.17 +/- 0.44 mm, and in-lesion-0.23 +/- 0.41 mm vs. 0.24 +/- 0.47 mm) and similar frequency of binary restenosis (in-stent-4.6% vs. 3.2% and in-lesion-6.1% vs. 8.9%) between the two treatment strategies. However, stent-edge restenosis was lower with direct stenting than in the predilatation control group (2.1% vs. 6.9%, P = 0.02). At 12-months, there were no significant differences in target lesion revascularization (3.7% vs. 5.1%, P = ns) or composite major adverse cardiac events (7.0% vs. 8.3%, P = ns).
Conclusions: In patients similar to those treated in the SIRIUS trial, direct stenting using sirolimus-eluting stents achieves excellent short- and long-term clinical and angiographic results with shorter procedure time and less frequent stent edge restenosis compared with predilation stent implantation techniques.
(c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.