Does distal intracoronary infusion of tirofiban reduce microvascular obstruction and infarct size compared to systemic intravenous infusion in high thrombotic risk STEMI patients undergoing pPCI?
Distal intracoronary administration of tirofiban reduces microvascular obstruction and infarct size compared to systemic intravenous infusion in STEMI patients with high thrombus burden undergoing primary PCI.
OBJECTIVE: Current guidelines recommend the use of glycoprotein IIb/IIIa (GpIIb/IIIa) inhibitors in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) only as a bail-out therapy. However, drug penetration to the jeopardised area may not be achieved due to impeded blood flow and increased microvascular resistance. Aim of our study is to investigate the impact of distal intracoronary GpIIb/IIIa inhibitor agent infusion in STEMI patients. Primary endpoints were microvascular obstruction (MVO) and infarct size. METHODS: Patients with STEMI who have high thrombus burden or slow-flow/NR phenomenon and undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) were enrolled. Tirofiban was the preferred GpIIb/IIIa inhibitor. Patients were assigned to the systemic intravenous infusion group and intracoronary infusion group in whom bolus dose of tirofiban was distally infused to the infarct related artery. MVO and size of the infarct size were assessed via cardiac MRI. RESULTS: = .030) were significantly lower in distal intracoronary infusion group. CONCLUSIONS: Cardiac MRI based assessment revealed that intracoronary administration of GpIIb/IIIa inhibitors distal to the culprit lesion was associated with reduced MVO and infarct size in high thrombotic risk STEMI patients undergoing pPCI.
Tokdil et al. (Thu,) studied this question.