Use of enhanced stent visualisation compared to angiography alone to guide percutaneous coronary intervention

We aimed to assess the use of enhanced stent visualisation (ESV) on outcomes, after PCI with overlapping stents, specifically using CLEARstent technology. Stent underexpansion and overlap are both significant risk factors for restenosis and stent thrombosis. Enhanced stent visualisation (e.g. CLEARstent) systems could provide important data to reduce under-expansion and stent overlap. This was a cohort study based on this institution's percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) registry. A total of 2614 patients who had PCI for stable angina or acute coronary syndromes (ACS, excluding cardiogenic shock) with overlapping 2nd generation drug eluting stents (DES) in the same vessel between May 2015 and January 2018 were included in the analysis. Patients were divided into ESV (n = 1354) and no ESV guided intervention (n = 1260). The primary end-point was major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE: target vessel revascularisation, target vessel myocardial infarction and all-cause mortality) recorded at a median follow up of 2.4 years. Groups were comparable for patient characteristics (age, diabetes mellitus, ACS presentation). A significant difference in MACE was observed between patients who underwent ESV-guided PCI (9.5%) compared with patients who underwent Standard PCI (14.4%, p = .018). This difference was mainly driven by reduced rates of target vessel revascularisation and recurrent myocardial infarction. Overall this difference persisted after multivariate Cox analysis (HR 0.86, 95% CI: 0.73–0.98) and propensity matching (HR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.69–0.99). We suggest that routine clinical use of ESV technology during PCI can be useful, and is associated with better medium-term angiographic and clinical outcomes. Further study is required to build on this promising signal. •Stent underexpansion, underdeployment and geographical miss remain risk factors for stent complications in the DES era.•ESV systems are easy to install and use, adding a few extra contrast free seconds onto standard image acquisition.•In this large study of over 2500 patients, we found a significant association between ESV use and MACE rates compared to standard PCI alone (9.5% vs 14.4% (p = .0018)).•This suggests that the routine use of this simple, quick, cheap and widely available technology may improve patient outcomes after PCI Further randomized trials are needed to see whether the routine use of ESV technology replicates this promising signal.