The indications for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) continue to evolve because of the steady improvement in technology, broadened patient and lesion selection criteria, and new evidence from clinical trials. Considerable controversy was generated by the main results from the Clinical Outcomes Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation (COURAGE) trial, in which no difference in long-term outcome was reported for stable patients with coronary disease randomized to an initial strategy of PCI plus optimal medical therapy versus optimal medical therapy alone. In patients with chronic stable angina, medical therapy remains the cornerstone and should be optimized for all patients, while the major achievable goals of PCI are to affect symptoms, either by decreasing or preventing them, reducing the need for subsequent procedures and relieving ischemia. In patients with stable coronary artery disease, however, no reduction in death or myocardial infarction has been observed, and these limitations of PCI in this clinical setting need to be emphasized. The message from the COURAGE trial may be refined based on recently presented nuclear and angiographic sub-studies, such that patients with substantial residual ischemia on optimal medical therapy should be considered for crossover PCI, as it is associated with greater likelihood of death and myocardial infarction. However, those findings need to be confirmed by prospective evaluation before being widely accepted by the interventional community.
Angioplasty, transluminal, percutaneous coronary; myocardial revascularization; drug therapy; survival; prospective studies