Short- and long-term outcomes of percutaneous coronary interventions of high-risk vs. low-risk lesions performed at a hospital without an on-site cardiac surgery unit.

Aim    Widespread utilization of technology has led to the construction of a growing number of facilities with coronary angiography units and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) capability. Some of these centers do not have cardiovascular surgery (CVS) on site. Studies regarding the efficacy and safety of PCIs performed at these hospitals have been conducted. However, to date, high-risk procedures in this context have not been evaluated. The present study compares the outcomes of PCI procedures performed on high- and low-risk lesions groups in a center without CVS back-up.Material and methods    A total of 999 patients treated with PCI with diagnoses other than ST elevation myocardial infarction were included in this study. Patients with SYNTAX scores 22 or higher, bifurcation lesions, chronic total occlusions, left main coronary artery lesions and saphenous graft lesions were classified as a high-risk group. In contrast, patients with SYNTAX scores lower than 22 were included in the low-risk group. Coronary lesions were classified as Type-A, B, and C. The 30­day major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and 1­year target vessel revascularization (TVR) rates were compared.Results    There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of the rates of MACE (2 (0.9 %) vs 5 (0.6 %); p=0.64) and TVR (9 (4.2 %) vs 25 (3.2 %); p=0.52). Analysis regarding the lesion type also revealed no significant difference between the MACE and TVR rates (p=0.56 and p=0.43, respectively).Conclusions    The findings in this study demonstrated that, similar to low-risk procedures, complex and high-risk coronary interventions can safely and effectively be conducted in hospitals without a CVS unit.