Contemporary outcomes in vascular patients who require preoperative coronary stent

The documented risks of preoperative coronary revascularization prior to vascular surgery have led to a marked reduction in the role of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) during preoperative risk stratification. However, many patients with peripheral arterial disease are first identified immediately after a PCI for an acute coronary syndrome. We sought to determine the risks associated with these patients who then go on to have a peripheral arterial intervention (open operation or endovascular procedure). We hypothesized that there was no difference in outcomes in patients whose medical condition required PCI with coronary stent placement prior to a vascular operation compared with a control cohort of nonstented patients who underwent a vascular operation alone. We report the vascular operative outcomes in a contemporary cohort of vascular patients who had PCI with coronary stent placement for an acute event.

We performed a retrospective cohort analysis, utilizing administrative data, of 3,678 vascular patients from 2005 to 2010 at a tertiary care hospital. Two groups were defined: patients with preoperative PCI and coronary stent placement within 1 year prior to vascular operation (N = 101, mean age 66 ± 1.22 years, 51.5% men); and patients with no PCI prior to vascular operation (N = 3,577, mean age 60 ± 0.27 years, 46.37% men). Cardiovascular risk factors and complications derived from ICD-9 codes were used to parse data after open peripheral vascular surgery, endovascular repair, or amputation. Primary outcomes were death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, major adverse cardiac event (MACE, defined as death, myocardial infarction, or subsequent coronary revascularization) or bleeding.

Univariate analysis showed significant differences in both demographic and outcome analysis in patients with and without prior coronary stent. Patients with a recent PCI followed by a vascular procedure were more likely to undergo an endovascular procedure (75.3% vs. 64.5%, odds ratio = 1.67, P = 0.028). These patients also had 11 of 20 cardiovascular risk factors, significantly higher than in those without a prior PCI. Multivariate subgroup analysis indicated that patients with a prior coronary stent were more likely to have an episode of congestive heart failure (CHF) after 1 year of surgery (16.8%, P = 0.045). In addition, an acute cardiac ischemic event was more likely within 1 year (2.0%, P = 0.036) and beyond 1 year (4.0%, P = 0.022) of surgery. Importantly, there was no significant increase in death, myocardial infarction, MACE, or bleeding in patients with a preoperative coronary stent.

Patients who underwent PCI with coronary stent and then went on to require a vascular procedure had significantly more cardiovascular (CV) risk factors and were more likely to have an endovascular procedure than those patients without preoperative PCI. When controlling for CV risk factors and procedure type, there was no significant difference in death, MI, MACE, or bleeding complications between the groups.