Deferred Stenting for Heavy Thrombus Burden During Percutaneous Coronary Intervention for ST-Elevation MI

Patients with ST-elevation MI (STEMI) usually have a huge thrombus burden in the infarct-related artery. Stenting may lead to high chances of the slow-flow/no-reflow phenomenon that leads to periprocedural MI and adverse cardiovascular events. Deferred stenting may be beneficial in this situation as the thrombus burden will reduce, mitigating the slow-flow/no-reflow phenomenon. However, routine deferral of stenting in patients with STEMI has not been found to be beneficial, but when the patient is properly selected, deferred stenting has the potential for reducing the final infarct size. The authors report the safety and feasibility of deferred stenting after 5 days of prolonged anticoagulation in a 45-year-old smoker with STEMI who had a large thrombus load shown on an angiogram. They review the registries, trials and meta-analyses on deferred stenting in the literature and analyse the benefits and harms of the strategy. They also propose an algorithm for applying a strategy for deferred stenting in clinical practice based on the available data.