Background and aim. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the most important causes of death worldwide. ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is an acute form of presentation in patients with CAD. Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is the treatment of choice in STEMI patients. Generally, a stent is placed after the culprit lesion is dilated in order to ensure the patency of the coronary artery. In-stent restenosis (ISR) is a possible chronic complication in this setting. The following study is one of the few of its kind, since it investigates ISR in a cohort of Romanian patients who underwent PCI in the setting of STEMI. Our current descriptive study aims at highlighting the characteristics of these patients and identifying potential risk factors in this specific population, which could be validated by a further larger study.
Methods. We studied 68 patients from “Dr. Carol Davila” Central Military Emergency University Hospital in Bucharest, Romania, who presented with STEMI in 2016. The mean time for angiographic reevaluation was 111 days.
Results. 94% (64) of the patients underwent primary PCI, while in 6% (4) of the cases thrombolysis was initially attempted before PCI. The most prevalent risk factors that we identified were: arterial hypertension (61%), dyslipidemia (60%) and smoking or history of smoking (47%). The anterior myocardial infarction was the most prevalent (49%). Only 6% of the patients had a documented history of CAD, while on the other hand chronic occlusions were observed in most patients (85%). Of note is that only 11% of the patients reported recurrent angina before the angiographic reevaluation.
Conclusion. Common cardiovascular risk factors are also involved in ISR. Their poor management in the case of Romanian patients with STEMI increases the risk of ISR. The lack of symptoms in patients with ISR constitutes a warning sign for clinicians and shows that ISR is a complication which can be easily omitted. Therefore, its incidence is probably underestimated.
