Intracoronary Brachytherapy for Restenosis: 20 Years of Follow-Up

Intracoronary brachytherapy (ICB) has mainly been used to treat in-stent restenosis following percutaneous coronary intervention and was virtually abandoned about 20 years ago. However, patients treated with this strategy are still alive and some teams continue to perform this therapy. We aimed to investigate the very long-term clinical outcome of patients treated with ICB.

A total of 173 consecutive patients who had been treated with ICB at a large tertiary referral centre between 1998 and 2003 were included. The primary endpoint of the study was all-cause mortality. The secondary endpoints were as follows: occurrence of major adverse cardiac events (MACE, defined as all-cause death, non-fatal myocardial infarction, or target vessel revascularization), cardiac death, and presence of angina at the end of follow-up.

Patients' mean age at the time of ICB was 64 ± 10 years and 77 % were male. Restenosis (bare metal stent vs. balloon angioplasty) was the only indication for ICB. Unstable angina was present in 34 % of the patients. Follow-up was available for 166 patients. After a mean follow-up of 20 ± 1.3 years, 66 % of the patients had died (including 74 patients (67 %) with cardiac death). Cumulative MACE rate at 20 years was 96 %.

Very long-term follow-up of patients with in-stent restenosis treated with ICB confirmed a high all-cause mortality rate mainly due to cardiac causes and MACEs.