The characteristic of acute coronary syndromes of patients with multivessel coronary artery disease in centers with and without cardiac surgery on-site – data from PL-ACS registry
Authors: Brust K , Smiech K , Bujak K , Roleder T , Gasior M 
Published: October 2022

Background

Every year more than 100,000 acute coronary syndromes are diagnosed in Poland. There are 36 cardio-surgical centers and more than 157 catheterization laboratories available in Poland dedicated to treat acute coronary syndromes. MVD patients have a considerable clinically relevant burden of adverse cardiovascular events following ACS.

Purpose

The aim of the study was to analyze the outcomes of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) treatment in Polish patients with the multivessel coronary disease (MVD) in the centers with and without cardiac surgery (CS) on site.

Methods

This was a retrospective analysis (1st January, 2017 to 31st December, 2020) of ACS patients outcomes using data from PL-ACS registry. PL-ACS registry is a polish archive of the ACS patients, which data are obtained from all cardiology and cardiac surgery departments in Poland. The registry is supervised by the Polish Ministry of Health. The following analysis considered only patients with MVD. MVD was defined as the presence of ≥70% diameter stenosis of three or more epicardial coronary arteries. For the purpose of this analysis the MVD patients (n=4618) were divided to two groups: those treated in the centers with the cardiac surgery department on site (CS group, n=595) and those without (non-CS group, n=4023).

Results

Patients in the CS group were elder (70.8 vs. 69.0, p=0.008) as compared to the non-CS group. There were no differences in sex (male 68.6% vs. 67.2%, p=0.49) and BMI (27.5% vs. 27.7%, p=0.12) were between both groups. There was no statistically significant difference between the types of acute coronary syndrome, between CS and non-CS group – [STEMI (34.6% vs 31.1%), NSTEMI (53.6% vs 55.3%), UA (11.8% vs 13.6%), p=0.16]. Patients in the CS group had higher prevalence of renal failure (13.3% vs. 8.8%, p≤0.001) and a more frequent had a history of a past coronary angioplasty (18.9% vs. 14.4%, p=0.005). During the coronary angiography a femoral artery access was more often used in CS group patients (47.1% vs. 15.2%, p&lt;0.001). Percutaneous coronary intervention of MVD was more often performed in the CS group (74.6% vs. 71.0%, p=0.054). In-hospital death (7.6% vs. 4.6%, p=0.002), reinfarction (1.1% vs. 0.1%, p&lt;0.001), hemorrhagic complications (6.4% vs. 1.6%, p&lt;0.001), recurrent target vessel revascularization (1.8% vs. 0.4%, p≤0.001) and pulmonary oedema (3.7% vs. 1.5%, p&lt;0.001) occurred more often in the CS group.

Conclusions

The safety of ACS treatment in MVD patients in centers without CS on site is non-inferior to treatment of such patients in center with CS on site. Interestingly, there were more in-hospital adverse cardiac events observed in ACS MVD patients treated in center with CS on-site. However, in centers with CS on site ACS MVD patients had a higher co-morbidity and were subjected to a higher number of PCIs. It suggests that in general, centers with CS-onsite treat more severe patients as compared to those without CS on-site.

Funding Acknowledgement

Type of funding sources: None.