BACKGROUNDLesions at coronary bifurcations always are a big challenge for interventionists even with the advent of drug eluting stents (DES). Even as more clinical trials are published, operators still can not confirm that one strategy is more efficient than another. Selection of patients and short term follow-up contribute to the difficulty in comparing strategies.

METHODSFrom April 2004 to April 2008, 505 consecutive Chinese patients underwent DES implantation for true bifurcation lesions; including 258 using crush strategy (213 male, (56.7 +/- 10.8) years old) and 247 using no crush strategy (206 male, (58.1 +/- 10.1) years old) were analyzed.

RESULTSThe follow-up period ranged from 237 to 1223 days, average (537 +/- 340) days for the crush group and (538 +/- 351) days for the no crush group. There was no significant difference of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) rate between the two groups (10.1% vs 12.1%; P = 0.481), nor in cardiac death, nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) or in the target vessel revascularization (TVR) (0.4% vs 1.6%; P = 0.207, 2.7% vs 2.8; P = 1.000 and 7.0% vs 7.7%; P = 0.865). The stent thrombosis rate was similar in the two groups (1.6% vs 2.0%; P = 0.409), late and very late stent thrombosis in both groups were very low (0.4% vs 0.4%; P = 1.000). Seven-month angiographic follow-up showed no significant difference of the restenosis rate between the two groups (11.0% vs 13.5%; P = 0.786). During the follow-up, cardiac death, nonfatal MI, TVR and ST free survival rate showed no significant difference between the two groups. The only variant identified as a predictor of MACE was percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in the first two years, which accounted for 47% of patients of all cases in four years.

CONCLUSIONCrush technique showed similar long-term clinical effect compared with other two DES techniques for coronary bifurcation lesions, the surgeons' skills are very important for reducing clinical events.