Optimal Medical Therapy vs. Percutaneous Coronary Intervention for Patients With Coronary Chronic Total Occlusion　– A Propensity-Matched Analysis –

Abstract

Background:Limited data are available on the long-term clinical outcomes of coronary chronic total occlusion (CTO) patients who receive optimal medical therapy (OMT) compared with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).Methods and Results:Between March 2003 and February 2012, 2,024 patients with CTO were enrolled in a single-center registry. Among this patient group, we excluded CTO patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting and classified patients into the OMT group (n=664) or PCI group (n=883) according to initial treatment strategy. Propensity-score matching was also performed. The primary outcome was cardiac death. The median follow-up duration was 45.8 (interquartile range: 22.8–71.1) months. In the PCI group, 699 patients (79.2%) underwent successful revascularization. In the propensity-score matched population (533 pairs), there was no significant difference in the rate of cardiac death between the OMT and PCI groups (hazard ratio, 1.57; 95% confidence interval, 0.91–2.72, P=0.11). In the subgroup analysis, there were no significant interactions between the PCI strategy and cardiac death among several subgroups except that regarding collateral flow grades 0–2 vs. those with grade 3 (P=0.01).Conclusions:As an initial treatment strategy, PCI did not reduce cardiac death compared with OMT for the treatment of CTO in the drug-eluting stent era. (Circ J 2016; 80: 211–217)