Early Invasive Versus Initially Conservative Strategy in Elderly Patients Older Than 75 Years with Non-ST-Elevation Acute Coronary Syndrome: A Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Fear of complications related to the procedure and unclear benefits in elderly patients are common reasons for invasive angiography being withheld.

METHODS: We searched PubMed and Embase from inception until February 2016 for studies that enrolled individuals older than 75 years with non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS) and allocated patients to either an invasive or conservative strategy.

RESULTS: Thirteen studies (four randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and nine observational studies) enrolling 832,007 elderly NSTE-ACS patients were analysed. Compared with the conservative treatment, the early invasive approach does significantly reduce the risk of death at follow-up from 6 months to 5 years (risk ratio [RR] 0.65, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.59-0.73, p<0.001); the definite benefit was mainly observed in observational studies (RR 0.63, 95% CI 0.57-0.70, p<0.001), and the risk of death also showed a strong trend toward reduction with invasive approach (RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.64-1.05, p=0.119) in RCTs. For the outcome of bleeding complications, there was a higher risk of any bleeding occurring in-hospital (RR 2.51, 95% CI 1.53-4.11, p<0.001) in patients treated with invasive strategy than those treated with conservative strategy. However, no difference of in-hospital major bleeding (RR 1.78, 95% CI 0.31-10.13, p=0.514) was observed between the two strategies.

CONCLUSION: Elderly patients with NSTE-ACS might benefit from an early invasive strategy but with increasing risk of any bleeding complications. More RCTs are needed to assess early invasive strategies in the elderly.