Drug-Eluting Stents Versus Bare-Metal Stents in Patients With End-Stage Renal Disease

The clinical outcomes of drug-eluting stents versus bare-metal stents in end-stage renal disease patients remains controversial. A comprehensive literature search of Pubmed, Embase and Cochrane Library from January 2000 until November 2016 was conducted to identify relevant articles. We pooled the odds ratios (OR) from individual studies and conducted heterogeneity, quality assessment and publication bias analyses. A total of 18 studies with 44,194 patients were identified. Compared with bare-metal stent-treated patients, drug-eluting stent-treated patients had significantly lower short-term and long-term all-cause mortality (OR = 0.56; 95% CI: 0.48-0.65; P < 0.00001; OR = 0.78; 95% CI: 0.66-0.92; P = 0.004, respectively), myocardial infarction (OR = 0.69; 95% CI: 0.53-0.88; P = 0.003) and major adverse cardiac events (OR = 0.72; 95% CI: 0.58-0.90; P = 0.004), with no detectable difference regarding stent thrombosis (OR = 0.80; 95% CI: 0.43-1.49; P = 0.47), cardiac mortality (OR = 0.95; 95% CI: 0.89-1.02; P = 0.14) and repeat revascularization (OR = 0.81; 95% CI: 0.62-1.06; P = 0.13). In patients with end-stage renal disease, the use of drug-eluting stents could significantly reduce the rates of mortality, myocardial infarction and major adverse cardiac events without increased risk of stent thrombosis. It poses imperative demands for future prospective randomized studies to define the optimal stent choice in this high-risk population.