Clinical Outcomes, Pharmacologic Treatment and Quality of Life of Patients with Stable Coronary Artery Diseases Managed by Cardiologists: 1-Year Results of the START Study.

Aims: We evaluated the 1-year clinical events, pharmacologic management and quality of life in a contemporary cohort of stable coronary artery disease (CAD) patients managed by cardiologists.

Methods and Results: START (STable Coronary Artery Diseases RegisTry) was a prospective, observational, nationwide study that enrolled 5070 stable CAD patients over 3 months in 183 cardiology centers in Italy. At 1 year, 4790 (94.5%) patients had data on vital status. Death occurred in 107 (2.2%) patients and the cause of death was cardiovascular in 41 (38.3%) of cases. Among the 4775 patients with follow-up data on clinical events available, a hospitalization due to cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular causes occurred in 523 (11.0%) and in 231 (4.8%) of cases, respectively. Over 60% of patients reported as "no problems" in all domains (61.4-84.5%) of the EuroQoL quality of life 5D-5L questionnaire. Among the 3239 patients with clinical visit/telephone interview at follow-up, in whom optimal medical therapy (OMT; aspirin or thienopyridine, β-blocker, and statin) was prescribed at enrollment, 2971 (91.7%) were still receiving OMT at follow-up. At multivariable analysis, only increasing age (OR 0.98; 95% CI 0.97-0.99; p = 0.04) resulted as independent negative predictor of OMT persistence at 1 year from enrolment.

Conclusions: In this large, contemporary registry, stable CAD patients managed by cardiologists presented a high rate of clinical events at 1 year. Nevertheless, the persistence to OMT and quality of life appeared reasonable.