Role of Routine Follow-up Coronary Angiography After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention - Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND

Prior studies have shown that routine follow-up coronary angiography (CAG) following percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) increases the incidence of revascularization without a clear reduction in major adverse clinical events. However, none of these prior studies were adequately powered to evaluate hard clinical endpoints such as myocardial infarction (MI) or death and thus the clinical utility of such practice remains to be determined.Methods and Results:We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials that compared clinical outcomes after PCI between patients who underwent routine follow-up CAG and those who only had clinical follow-up. Five randomized trials, totaling 4,584 patients met our inclusion criteria, including studies that used sub-randomization and ones that assigned consecutive patients per study protocol. Our results showed that routine follow-up CAG was associated with a lower rate of MI (odds ratio [OR] 0.65; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.46-0.91; P=0.01) without reduction in all-cause mortality (OR 0.87; 95% CI 0.59-1.28; P=0.48), and a higher rate of target lesion revascularization (OR 1.73; 95% CI 1.42-2.11; P<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

Our meta-analysis demonstrated that routine follow-up CAG after PCI was associated with a higher rate of revascularization, but also with a reduction in the rate of subsequent MI. Further studies investigating the potential role of routine follow-up angiography may be warranted.