Outcomes of nonstenting percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

The aim of the present study was to explore the outcomes of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and coronary heart disease. We identified 25,367 patients from the National Health Insurance Research Database who underwent nonstenting PCI in Taiwan in 2007. Of these patients, 240 had been diagnosed with RA. As a comparison group, we selected 1,200 patients who were matched with the study group by gender and age. We performed conditional logistic regression analysis to compare the outcomes of PCI between the 2 groups. We found no significant differences in the rates of in-hospital mortality (2.5% vs 3.1%, p = 0.628), 90-day readmission for PCI (8.3% vs 7.2%, p = 0.559), or 365-day readmission for PCI (22.5% vs 19.2%, p = 0.236) between the patients with and without RA. Similarly, the conditional logistic regression analyses revealed that patients with RA had no greater adjusted odds of in-hospital mortality (odds ratio 0.94, 95% confidence interval 0.37 to 2.36), 90-day readmission for PCI (odds ratio 1.20, 95% confidence interval 0.37 to 2.36), and 365-day readmission for PCI (odds ratio 1.30, 95% confidence interval 0.92 to 1.83) than the comparison group. In conclusion, our study did not find an increased risk of adverse outcomes among patients with RA after PCI.