Effect of intracoronary thrombolytic therapy on exercise-induced ischemia after acute myocardial infarction

Intracoronary streptokinase (SK) therapy increases vessel patency rate after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and thus may lead to a greater exercise-induced myocardial ischemia. This hypothesis was tested in 39 patients enrolled in an angiographically randomized trial of intracoronary SK (19 treated with SK and 20 control subjects); all patients underwent thallium-201 scintigraphy at rest before acute angiography, as well as at rest and during stress 5 to 6 weeks after AMI. The patients were classified into 2 groups based on the presence (n = 13) or absence (n = 26) of complete obstruction of the infarct-related coronary artery at the end of the acute angiography. Semiquantitative score of myocardial thallium uptake was expressed as percent of maximal defect score. Thallium defect score at rest between admission and 5 to 6 weeks' study decreased from 10 +/- 16% units in the control group and from 23 +/- 14% units in the SK group (p = 0.01). This decrease was related to opening of the infarct-related artery (opening 23 +/- 16% vs occlusion 5 +/- 10%). The change in exercise-induced defect score was significantly (p = 0.01) larger in patients in the SK group (11 +/- 6% units) than in those in the control group (5 +/- 7% units). The perfusion defect during exercise was larger (p = 0.006) in patients with incomplete obstruction or reperfusion (10 +/- 6% units) than in patients with complete obstruction (3 +/- 7%). This difference was independent of the number of diseased coronary vessels.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)