Drug-Coated Balloon Angioplasty for De Novo Lesions on the Left Anterior Descending Artery.

BACKGROUND

Drug-coated balloons (DCB) are an emerging tool for modern percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), but evidence on their use for de novo lesions on large vessels is limited.

METHODS

Consecutive patients undergoing DCB-based PCI on the left anterior descending artery in 2 Italian centers from 2018 to 2022 were retrospectively enrolled and compared with patients who received left anterior descending PCI with contemporary drug-eluting stents (DES). In-stent restenosis was excluded. The DCB group included both patients undergoing DCB-only PCI and those receiving hybrid PCI with DCB and DES combined. The primary end point was target lesion failure at 2 years, defined as the composite of target lesion revascularization, cardiac death, and target vessel myocardial infarction.

RESULTS

We included 147 consecutive patients undergoing DCB-based treatment on the left anterior descending artery and compared them to 701 patients who received conventional PCI with DES. In the DCB group, 43 patients (29.2%) were treated with DCB only and 104 (70.8%) with a hybrid approach; DCB length was greater than stent length in 55.1% of cases. Total treated length was higher in the DCB group (65 [40-82] versus 56 [46-66] mm; =0.002), while longer DESs were implanted (38 [24-62] versus 56 [46-66] mm; <0.001) and a higher rate of large vessels were treated (76.2% versus 83.5%; =0.036) in the DES cohort. The cumulative 2-year target lesion failure incidence was not significantly different between the 2 groups (DCB, 4.1% versus DES, 9.8%; hazard ratio, 0.51 [95% CI, 0.20-1.27]; =0.15). After a 1:1 propensity score matching resulting in 139 matched pairs, the DCB-based treatment was associated with a lower risk for target lesion failure at 2 years compared with DES-only PCI (hazard ratio, 0.2 [95% CI, 0.07-0.58]; =0.003), mainly driven by less target lesion revascularization.

CONCLUSIONS

A DCB-based treatment approach for left anterior descending revascularization allows a significantly reduced stent burden, thereby potentially limiting target lesion failure risk at midterm follow-up.