Researchers examined 815 patients with chronic total occlusion — that is complete or near-complete blockage in the arteries — at 19 cardiac centers in Asia. They randomly assigned 417 patients to receive the PCI procedure as well as drugs and 398 patients to receive only drugs. They tracked outcomes for three years.
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The study shows no major difference in the composite primary endpoint as well as rates of death, heart attack, stroke and subsequent revascularization procedures when comparing the two strategies.
“PCI is not the only solution to treat chronic total occlusion, and in terms of patient outcomes, cost versus benefit, and other considerations, it is not beneficial to use PCI for all chronic total occlusion lesions,” said Seung-Jung Park, MD, the study’s lead author and a cardiologist at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea.
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