SCAI: SYNTAX Data Show PCI Is a Good Option for Patients With Complex Coronary Arte...( One-Year Data Find Angioplasty and S...),Health

One-Year Data Find Angioplasty and Stenting Safe and Effective in Patients

for Whom Standard Therapy Has Been Open-Heart Surgery

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Data announced today from the landmark SYNTAX trial indicate that patients with very complex coronary artery disease can safely choose to be treated with angioplasty and drug-eluting stents rather than open-heart surgery, says The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI). The one-year results of SYNTAX also show that most patients with left main and multi-vessel disease who undergo angioplasty and stenting will not need a second revascularization procedure in the first year.

Until this morning's announcement at the European Society of Cardiology Congress (Munich, Germany), patients with advanced and anatomically complex coronary artery disease were advised to undergo open-heart bypass surgery. The SYNTAX (SYNergy Between Percutaneous Coronary Intervention with TAXUS and Cardiac Surgery) study found that the less-invasive option of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stents had rates of heart attack and death no different from bypass surgery after one year.

"Starting today, I can tell my patients with left main and multi-vessel disease that angioplasty and drug-eluting stents are just as safe for them as surgery in terms of death or heart attack," says Dr. Ted Feldman, SCAI Past President, Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University School of Medicine, Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Evanston Hospital (Chicago, IL), and SYNTAX Steering Committee member. "The SYNTAX results are good news for patients and physicians because we now have another treatment option for the most complex patients. PCI is less invasive than surgery, and it takes days, not weeks, to recover from."

The results of SYNTAX have been eagerly anticipated because the study is the first randomized comparison of PCI with drug
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