Coronary artery bypass surgery continues to remain the treatment of choice for multivessel coronary artery disease even in the era of new-generation drug-eluting stents

Commentary on: Park SJ, Ahn JM, Kim YH, et al; BEST Trial Investigators. Trial of everolimus-eluting stents or bypass surgery for coronary disease. N Engl J Med 2015;372:1204–12. Context Multivessel coronary artery disease (MVCAD) may be found in patients subjected to coronary angiography. It is treated with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The expanded use of PCI, following development of drug-eluting stents (DES), necessitated comparison of its outcomes with CABG (gold standard therapy). The SYNTAX (SYNergy between PCI with TAXUS and Cardiac Surgery) trial favoured CABG with regard to occurrence of cardiac death, myocardial infarction (MI), repeat revascularisation, and major cardiac and cerebrovascular events.1 New-generation DES and new antiproliferative agents have better efficacy and safety than first-generation DES,2 thus entailing comparison studies with CABG. Methods In this trial 880 patients were randomised. PCI of all lesions...
Source: Evidence-Based Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Clinical trials (epidemiology), Drugs: cardiovascular system, Stroke, Interventional cardiology, Ischaemic heart disease, Venous thromboembolism, Radiology, Clinical diagnostic tests, Radiology (diagnostics) Therapeutics/Prevention Source Type: research