Treatment of Ostial Right Coronary Artery Narrowings: Outcomes From the Multicenter Prospective e-ULTIMASTER Registry

Background: Treatment of right coronary artery (RCA) aorto-ostial (AO) lesions with bare-metal stents and first-generation drug-eluting stents (DES) was associated with worse outcomes. This study aimed to assess the effect of RCA-AO stenting with current-generation DES on the clinical outcome.

Methods: The large all-comer, multicontinental e-ULTIMASTER registry included 37,198 patients of whom 4775 underwent ostial and proximal RCA percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) using the Ultimaster stent (Terumo). The primary clinical end point was 1-year target lesion failure (TLF), a composite of cardiac death; target vessel-related myocardial infarction; or clinically indicated target lesion revascularization.

Results: We compared 591 (12.4%) patients who underwent RCA-AO PCI with 4184 (87.6%) patients who underwent proximal RCA PCI. The RCA-AO group included more men and recorded significantly more comorbidities and more complex coronary anatomy. After propensity matching, the primary end point TLF occurred in 4.49% of the RCA-AO group compared with 3.00% of the proximal RCA group (P = .06). Target vessel revascularization (3.29% vs 1.90%; P = .03) and stent thrombosis (1.23% vs 0.42%, P = .01) were significantly higher among patients with RCA-AO lesions than those among patients with proximal RCA lesions. All-cause mortality was similar between the groups (2.97% vs 2.26%; P = .30).

Conclusions: The treatment of RCA-AO with DES is feasible, with similar rates of TLF but with an increased risk of target vessel revascularization and stent thrombosis.