Immediate and midterm outcomes following primary PCI with bioresorbable vascular scaffold implantation in patients with ST-segment myocardial infarction: insights from the multicentre “Registro ABSORB Italiano” (RAI registry)

AIMS: In this multicentre prospective registry we sought to evaluate the immediate and midterm clinical outcomes following single or multiple overlapping bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS) implantation in the STEMI setting. METHODS AND RESULTS: A prospective cohort analysis was performed on all STEMI patients who underwent primary PCI with BVS implantation. Between December 2012 and February 2014, 1,232 STEMI patients underwent primary PCI at the participating centres. Of these, 74 (6.0%) received a BVS, 18 (24.3%) of them were multiple and overlapping. Procedural success was obtained in 72 (97.3%) cases without differences between the groups (overlapping BVS 100% vs. single BVS 96.4%, p=0.5). One patient experienced a reinfarction due to subacute BVS thrombosis which was successfully managed with balloon-only PCI while the other patient had a "slow-flow" phenomenon (final TIMI flow 2). At six-month follow-up, two non-fatal MI (2.7%), three target lesion revascularisations (4.1%), and one subacute BVS thrombosis were reported in three patients (one [5.6%] overlapping BVS and two [3.6%] in the single BVS group, p=0.5). All the events were successfully managed with re-PCI. CONCLUSIONS: BVS implantation in STEMI patients can be successfully performed with a high procedural success rate and encouraging midterm outcomes. Larger randomised trials and longer follow-up are needed to assess the potential clinical benefit of BVS versus new-generation DES in this setting.