Anatomic vs. Ischemia-Driven Strategies for Percutaneous Coronary Revascularization in Chronic Coronary Syndrome: A Network Meta-Analysis

Introduction: In patients with chronic coronary syndromes (CCS), the benefit of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) added to optimal medical therapy (OMT) remains unclear. The indication to PCI may be driven either by angiographic evaluation or ischemia assessment, thus depicting different potential strategies which have not yet been thoroughly compared.

Methods: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing OMT versus PCI angio-guided or versus PCI non-invasive or invasive ischemia guided were identified and compared via network meta-analysis. Major adverse clinical events (MACE), as defined by each included trial, were the primary endpoint, while cardiovascular (CV) death, myocardial infarction (MI), and unplanned revascularization the secondary ones.

Results: 18 studies, encompassing 17,512 patients, were included, with a mean follow-up of 3.5 years. PCI guided by ischemia defined either invasively or not was associated with a reduced risk of MACE compared with OMT alone. Furthermore, PCI guided by non-invasive assessment of ischemia was associated with a reduced risk of MI compared with OMT (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.61 [95% confidence interval: 0.37-0.94). This strategy ranked best also in preventing CV death. Notably, iFR and FFR guided approaches showed the highest probability of performing best for reduction of subsequent revascularizations.

Conclusion: In patients with CCS, ischemia-guided PCI, either by invasive or non-invasive assessment, resulted in a reduced risk of MACE compared with OMT alone. The use of invasive or non-invasive tests influenced the benefit of ischemia-driven PCI: non-invasive tests significantly reduced risk of MI compared with OMT, while iFR or FFR showed the highest probability of reducing the need of subsequent revascularization.