Short-versus long-term Dual Antiplatelet therapy after drug-eluting stent implantation in women versus men: A sex-specific patient-level pooled-analysis of six randomized trials

ABSTRACT

Background: Whether the efficacy and safety of dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) are uniform between sexes is unclear. We sought to compare clinical outcomes between short-(6 months) versus long-term (1 year) DAPT after drug-eluting stent (DES) placement inwomen and men. Methods and Results: We pooled individual patient data from 6 randomizedtrials of DAPT (EXCELLENT, OPTIMIZE, PRODIGY, RESET, SECURITY, ITALIC PLUS).The primary outcome was 1-year risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE). The mainsecondary outcome was 1-year risk of any bleeding. Out of the 11,473 randomized patients included in the pooled dataset, 3,454 (30%) were females. At 1-year follow-up, women hadhigher risk of MACE (3.6% vs. 2.8%; P 5 0.01) but similar risk of bleeding (1.9% vs. 1.6%;P 5 0.16) as compared with men. Compared with long-term DAPT, short-term DAPT wasassociated with similar rates of MACE in both women (HR 0.88; 95% CI 0.62–1.25) and men(HR 1.25; 95% CI 0.95–1.6; P interaction 5 0.08)]. At 1-year follow-up, short-term DAPT wasassociated with lower rates of bleeding as compared with long-term DAPT in both women(HR 0.84; 95% CI 0.51–1.37) and men (HR 0.58; 95% CI 0.40–0.84; P–interaction 5 0.25). The presence of MVD was associated with higher MACE rates in the short-term DAPT group inwomen (HR 1.16; CI 0.60–2.23) and men (HR 2.29; CI 1.22–4.29; P interaction 5 0.25). Conclusions: Short-term DAPT is associated with similar rates of MACE but lower risk ofbleeding when as compared with prolonged DAPT. There was no significant difference between sexes in the population studied...