The effect of thrombus aspiration during primary percutaneous coronary intervention on clinical outcome in daily clinical practice

It was the purpose of this study to assess the effect of thrombus aspiration (TA) during primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) on reperfusion and clinical outcome in a real-world STEMI population. The decision to use TA (Export catheter, Medtronic) was at the discretion of the treating cardiologist. The primary endpoint was mortality at short (in-hospital) and long term (one year) follow-up. Secondary end points were post-PCI TIMI flow, residual ST deviation and enzymatic infarct size. Cox proportional hazard models (propensity-weighted) and logistic regression analysis were used to adjust for known covariates, associated with mortality. We performed a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data on 2,552 consecutive PPCI-treated STEMI patients between 2007 and 2010. Use of TA increased from 6.9% in 2007 to 62.2% in 2010 (p<0.001). TA was performed in 899 patients (35.2%). In-hospital and one-year mortality rates were 3.0% and 6.0%, respectively, in the TA group and 3.5% and 7.6% in the no-TA group. After multivariate analysis, TA was not significantly associated with in-hospital mortality (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 0.70; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.33-1.49, p=0.36) nor one year mortality (adjusted hazard ratio [HR]: 0.75, 95%CI: 0.47-1.20, p=0.23) or cardiac mortality (HR: 0.81; 95%CI: 0.45-1.46, p=0.49). After matching on the propensity score, the HR in the TA group for one year mortality was 0.70 (95%CI: 0.41-1.20, p=0.19) and for one-year cardiac mortality 0.70 (95%CI: 0.36-1.34, p=0.28). In conclusion, no significant relationship of TA with one of the secondary end points was found. The use of TA increased over the last years but clinical outcome was similar in both groups (TA vs no-TA) in this large cohort of real-world, unselected STEMI patients.