Intravascular lithotripsy for severe coronary calcification: a systematic review

INTRODUCTION: Coronary artery calcification remains a challenge in percutaneous coronary interventions, due to the higher risk of suboptimal result with subsequent poor clinical outcomes. Intravascular lithotripsy is a novel way of treating severe coronary calcification as it has the ability to modify calcium both circumferentially as well as transmurally, facilitating stent expansion and apposition. We conducted a systematic overview of the published literature on intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) assessing the efficacy and feasibility of IVL in treating severe coronary calcification. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: Of the retrieved publications, 62 met our inclusion criteria and were included. A total of 1389 patients (1414 lesions) with significant coronary calcification or under-expanded stents underwent IVL. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: The mean age was 72.03 years (74.7% male). There was a significant improvement in acute and sustained vessel patency, with mean minimal lumen diameter of 2.78±0.46 mm, resulting in acute gain of 1.72±0.51 mm. The acute procedural success rate was 78.2 to 100% with in-hospital complication rate of 5.6 to 7.0%. The majority of the studies reported 30-day MACE, which was between 2.2 to 7.8%. CONCLUSIONS: The recent studies have highlighted that the use of IVL with adjuvant intracoronary imaging has revolutionized the way of treating heavily calcified, non-dilatable coronary lesions and is likely to succeed the conventional ways of treating these complex lesions. We need further studies to gauge the long-term efficacy and safety of IVL against techniques currently available for calcium modification including conventional balloons, cutting or scoring balloons, rotational atherectomy and laser atherectomy.