Clinical significance and determinants of prompt recruitment collaterals during primary percutaneous coronary...

Due to ischaemic time delays from the chest pain occurrence in acute ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), prompt recruitment collaterals (PRCCs) to infarct-related artery (IRA) are the major protective structures during this period.

We aimed to investigate the clinical significance and determinants of PRCCs in acute STEMI patients.

A total of 1375 consecutive acute STEMI patients were prospectively enrolled in the study. The patients were divided into two groups, according to PRCCs to IRA; Rentrop ≤ 1 were defined as inadequate collateral development (ICD) group and Rentrop ≥ 2 defined as adequate collateral development (ACD) group.

Patients in the ICD group had higher incidence of baseline risk characteristics, including older age, hypertension, and diabetes mellitus; however, pre-infarct angina incidence was lower than in the ACD group (p < 0.05 for all). In addition, the ICD group had worse haemodynamic status on admission and 30-day mortality. Compared to the ACD group, the non-IRA chronic total occlusion (CTO), peak troponin-T, N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), and high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels were higher in the ICD group. On multivariate logistic regression analysis, non-IRA CTO (b = 3.114, 95% CI 1.382-7.017, p < 0.006) with pre-infarction angina together with higher values of peak troponin-T, NT-proBNP, and hs-CRP were associated with PRCCs in acute STEMI.

Taking into account that the main message of the study is that if patients have higher cardiac biomarkers and adverse clinical findings (which, of note, may show the extent of myocardial infarction) and have non-IRA CTO, there is a higher chance that they will have inadequate collateralisation.