Clinical study
An invasive strategy is associated with decreased mortality in patients with unstable angina and non–ST-elevation myocardial infarction: GUSTO IIb trial

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Abstract

Purpose

There has been much debate concerning an invasive versus a conservative strategy for patients with acute coronary syndromes. The purpose of this study was to determine whether early in-hospital catheterization reduced mortality in patients with unstable angina and non–ST-elevation myocardial infarction.

Methods

We performed a retrospective analysis of data collected in the Global Use of Strategies to Open Occluded Coronary Arteries (GUSTO) IIb trial, which compared hirudin and heparin in patients with acute coronary syndromes. We identified 8011 patients with non–ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction and unstable angina who were enrolled in the trial. The primary endpoints were all-cause mortality at 30 days and 1 year. Data were analyzed with multivariate hazards models and propensity scores.

Results

After accounting for inception time bias, there were 7897 patients identified, of whom 4536 patients (57%) underwent invasive therapy and 3361 (43%) underwent conservative therapy. Adjusting for propensity scores, the adjusted 30-day mortality for the invasive group was 2.5% compared with 2.7% in the conservative group (P = 0.92); at 1 year, the invasive group had a 6.2% mortality, versus 8.6% in the conservative group (P = 0.005). In a multivariate analysis that adjusted for other clinical factors, an invasive strategy was associated with lower 1-year mortality (hazard ratio = 0.46; 95% confidence interval: 0.10 to 0.84).

Conclusion

In patients presenting with acute coronary syndromes, an invasive strategy is associated with improved survival at 1 year even after adjusting for baseline differences.

Section snippets

Study group

Prospective data were collected from patients enrolled in the GUSTO IIb trial (10). Briefly, the inclusion criteria consisted of chest pain within the previous 12 hours that was associated either with transient or persistent ST-segment elevation or depression of more than 0.5 mm, or with persistent, definite T-wave inversion of more than 1 mm. A total of 12,142 patients were enrolled in the trial. For our analysis, we included the 8011 patients who did not have ST-segment elevation. Of those,

Results

After eliminating patients with missing catheterization information and patients who died before the median time to catheterization, there were 7897 patients in our analysis. Of those, 4536 patients (57%) underwent in-hospital catheterization, including 2591 (57%) who underwent revascularization: 1585 (63%) with percutaneous coronary intervention and 1006 (40%) with coronary artery bypass grafting. The remainder of the patients (n = 3361 [43%]) did not undergo catheterization prior to

Discussion

The optimal utilization of cardiac catheterization and coronary revascularization for patients with unstable angina and non–ST-elevation myocardial infarction remains controversial. Whereas the TIMI IIIB and VANQWISH trials did not show a benefit with an early invasive strategy, the FRISC II and TACTICS-TIMI 18 trials did report that invasive therapy led to better outcomes 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Our data from a large cohort of patients with acute coronary syndromes suggest that an invasive strategy is

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