Timing of invasive coronary angiography in non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome—an updated individual patient data meta-analysis

The optimal timing of invasive coronary angiography in non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS) was subject of several randomized controlled trials (RCTs) since more than 20 years. American and European guidelines recommend an early invasive strategy <24 h for high-risk NSTE-ACS patients with a global registry of acute coronary events (GRACE) risk score >140 but without evidence for ongoing ischaemia or haemodynamic instability.1,2 However, scientific evidence supporting this recommendation is sparse. Butt et al.3 analysed the effect of the GRACE risk score on all-cause mortality in a post-hoc analysis of the very early versus deferred invasive evaluation using computerized tomography (VERDICT) trial. We combined the published VERDICT data with an existing database of our previous meta-analysis (Supplementary material online for further details, Table S1, Table S2, and Figure S1).4 Consecutively, we updated our previous GRACE risk score subgroup analysis to synthetize up-to-date scientific evidence from the currently available data. The methodology is described in the Supplementary material online in detail. In short, we performed one-stage as well as two-stage meta-analyses. Both approaches led to the same result that an early invasive strategy does reduce the risk of all-cause mortality in patients with a GRACE risk score >140 but not in patients with a GRACE risk score ≤140 or the unselected population of NSTE-ACS patients (Figure 1). While some heterogeneity is present in the total population (I2 = 30%), it is absent in each subgroup stratum (I2 = 0%; Supplementary material online, Figure S2). The reported finding is driven by the addition of data from the VERDICT trial. Exclusion of this trial leads to a similar finding as reported in our previous meta-analysis (see Supplementary material online, Table S3 and Supplementary material online, Figure S3).4