Heartbeat: Intervention for spontaneous coronary artery dissection?

Acute coronary syndrome due to spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) typically is managed conservatively because coronary anatomy returns to normal in most patients at follow-up and because there is a high rate of technical failure and complications with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, a subgroup of these patients is at risk of extensive myocardial infarction and might benefit from PCI, despite the risk of complications. In this issue of Heart , Kotecha and colleagues1 report outcomes in 215 SCAD patients (94% women, median age 48 years with a range of 42–54 years) who underwent PCI for ST-elevation myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest, TIMI grade 0/1 flow or proximal dissection (figure 1). As expected, PCI-related complications were frequent, occurring in 38.6% (83/215), with 13.0% (28/215) of patients suffering a serious complication. Even so, improved TIMI flow was achieved in 84.3% (118/140) with worsened TIMI flow in only 7% of patients. At a median follow-up of 900 days, 9.3% suffered recurrent acute myocardial infarction, 4.7% required further revascularisation, 1.5% had a stroke and 1.4% died. However, there was no difference in outcomes in SCAD-PCI patients compared with a matched cohort of SCAD patients who did not undergo PCI. Figure 1 Details of the PCI procedure in SCAD intervention patients (n=215): (A) interventional strategy, (B) number of stents deployed, (C) stent length compared with lesion length and (D) coronary heat map of stented AHA coronary segments. AHA, American Heart Association; PCI, percutaneous coronary intervention; SCAD, spontaneous coronary artery dissection. Adamson2 reminds us that SCAD …