Long-term clinical outcomes of optimal medical therapy vs. successful percutaneous coronary intervention for patients with coronary chronic total occlusions

There are little data on the long-term clinical outcomes of optimal medical therapy (OMT) compared with successful percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with chronic total occlusions (CTOs). A total of 388 patients with ≥1 CTO were enrolled from January 2008 to December 2010. 62 patients were excluded, and 326 patients were divided into an OMT group (n = 125) and PCI group (n = 201) according to the initial treatment strategy. Propensity-score matching was also done to adjust for baseline characteristics. The primary outcome was major adverse cardiac event (MACE), included cardiac death, recurrent myocardial infarction, and repeated revascularization. After a mean follow-up of 47.2 ± 20.0 months, there was no significant difference between the two groups with respect to the prevalence of MACE (successful PCI vs. OMT: 29.6% vs. 21.9%, unadjusted hazard ratio [HR] 1.47, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.95–2.28, p=0.085). After multivariate analyses, there were significant differences in the prevalence of MACE (adjusted HR 1.76, 95% CI 1.09–2.28, p=0.02) and repeated revascularization (2.14; 1.18–3.90, 0.01). In the propensity score-matched population (80 pairs), there were no significant differences in the prevalence of MACE (adjusted HR 1.89, 95% CI 0.96–3.71, p=0.06) and cardiac death (1.30, 0.44–3.80, 0.63) between groups. In the treatment of patients with CTOs, successful PCI did not reduce the long-term risk of MACE compared with OMT.