Impact of left main coronary artery disease on long-term mortality in patients undergoing drug-eluting stent implantation.

BACKGROUND: Limited data are available on long-term mortality according to the extent of coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stent (DES). We assessed long-term mortality DES implantation according to the extent of CAD and the impact of left main CAD alone on mortality among patients undergoing PCI with DES.

METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 18,716 patients were pooled from real-world PCI registries. The primary outcome was death from any cause. The median follow-up duration was 47.1 (interquartile range 32.8-57.9) months. The presence of left main CAD [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) 1.24, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.05-1.46, p = 0.012] and the extent of diseased vessels (adjusted HR 1.17, 95% CI 1.08-1.27, p < 0.001) significantly increased the risk of all-cause mortality. Left main CAD alone was associated with a risk of all-cause mortality similar to one- and two-vessel CAD, whereas it was associated with a significantly lower risk of mortality compared with three-vessel CAD (adjusted HR 0.42, 95% CI 0.18-0.98, p = 0.044). Among patients with left main CAD, the risk of mortality tended to increase in proportion with the number of concomitant vessel CAD, but it did not achieve statistical significance.

CONCLUSIONS: Among patients undergoing DES implantation, the risk of mortality increased in a stepwise manner according to the extent of coronary CAD. Left main CAD alone was associated with a risk of long-term mortality similar to one- and two-vessel CAD.