Impact of chronic total occlusion lesions on clinical outcomes in patients receiving rotational atherectomy: results from the ROCK registry

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of chronic total occlusion (CTO) on clinical outcomes in patients with calcified coronary lesions receiving rotational atherectomy (RA). This multi-center registry enrolled consecutive patients with calcified coronary artery disease who underwent RA during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) from 9 tertiary centers in Korea between January 2010 and October 2019. The primary outcome was target-vessel failure (TVF) which included the composite of cardiac death, target-vessel myocardial infarction (TVMI), and target-vessel revascularization (TVR). A total of 583 lesions were enrolled in this registry and classified as CTO ( n = 42 lesions, 7.2%) and non-CTO ( n = 541 lesions, 92.8%). The CTO group consisted of younger patients who were more likely to have a history of previous percutaneous coronary intervention or coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The incidence of the primary outcome was 14.1% and 16.7% for the non-CTO group and CTO group, respectively. The primary outcomes observed in the two groups were not significantly different (log-rank p = 0.736). The 18-month clinical outcomes of the CTO group were comparable to those of the non-CTO group in multivariate analysis. About 7% of patients requiring RA have CTO lesions and these patients experience similar clinical outcomes compared with those having non-CTO lesions. Use of RA for CTO lesions was safe despite higher procedural complexity.