Evolving revascularization approaches for myocardial ischemia

Stable angina pectoris secondary to ischemic heart disease is a common and disabling condition. Medical therapy aims to relieve symptoms, improve exercise capacity, and decrease cardiac events by reducing myocardial oxygen demand or improving coronary blood supply to the ischemic myocardium. If medical treatment is inadequate, invasive revascularization procedures to improve coronary perfusion are considered. Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) and coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery are well-established and widely used myocardial revascularization techniques. Recent advances in PTCA have attempted to address the problem of restenosis, initially through the deployment of bare metal intracoronary stents and, more recently, with drug-eluting stents. Developments in CABG have focused on reducing the invasiveness of the procedure and minimizing the incidence of serious complications. Refinements include the use of mechanical stabilizers, endoscopic harvesting of conduit vessels, robotic telemanipulation systems, and fully automated anastomotic devices. Surgical laser transmyocardial revascularization and therapeutic angiogenesis represent newer approaches to coronary revascularization. Therapeutic angiogenesis aims to deliver an angiogenic growth factor or cytokine to the myocardium to stimulate collateral blood vessel growth throughout the ischemic tissue. The angiogenic factor may be administered as a recombinant protein or as a transgene within a plasmid or gene-transfer vector. Ongoing angiogenic gene therapy clinical trials are evaluating which factors, vectors, and delivery techniques hold the greatest promise for management of patients with chronic stable angina.