Coronary artery bypass grafting versus drug-eluting stents in multivessel coronary disease. A meta-analysis on 24,268 patients.

Objective: Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) has been shown to provide better results than percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in multivessel coronary disease. Drug-eluting stents (DES) have significantly improved results of PCI in terms of restenosis but the advantages of such a treatment compared to CABG remain uncertain. This meta-analysis summarizes available data from observational cohorts comparing DES-PCI versus CABG. Methods: We performed a systematic literature search for observational cohorts comparing CABG versus DES-PCI in patients with multivessel coronary disease. The mixed model method was used to obtain the pooled hazard ratio (HR) for outcomes of interest. Results: A total of nine observational nonrandomized studies were identified and analyzed including a total of 24,268 patients with multivessel coronary disease who underwent DES-PCI (n = 13,540) and CABG (n = 10,728). Mean follow-up time was 20 months. Pooled analysis showed that DES-PCI and CABG were comparable in terms of composite occurrence of death, acute myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular accidents (HR = 0.94; 95% CI = 0.72—1.22; p = 0.66). However, there was a significantly higher risk of repeat revascularization in the DES-PCI group (HR = 4.06; 95% CI = 2.64—6.24; p < 0.001). Overall major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events rate in the DES-PCI was higher compared to the CABG group (HR = 1.86; 95% CI = 1.36—2.54; p < 0.001). Conclusions: In the ‘real world’ clinical practice, overall major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events rate continues to be higher after DES-PCI due to an excess of redo revascularization compared with CABG.