Twenty-nine patients died among the first 3,079 patients enrolled in the NHLBI PTCA Registry. The overall morality rate was 0.9%; the mortality rate was 0.8% in patients with 1-vessel CAD, 1.0% in those with multivessel CAD (excluding left main CAD), and 3.8% in those with left main CAD (p less than 0.01). The in-hospital morality rate was significantly higher among women (p less than 0.01), in patients older than 60 years, in patients with previous CABG (p less than 0.01), the presence of left main CAD, (p less than 0.01), in patients who required dilatation of a vein graft stenosis (p less than 0.05), and in patients who had had angina for longer than 6 months (p less than 0.01).