Relative spatial distributions of coronary artery bypass graft insertion and acute thrombosis: a model for protection from acute myocardial infarction.

Background: Randomized trials have demonstrated coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) to be superior to percutaneous coronary intervention with respect to long-term mortality and morbidity from myocardial infarction within specific high-risk cohorts. The purpose of this study was to analyze the spatial distribution of coronary artery bypass graft anastomoses relative to acute thromboses in native coronary arteries. We hypothesized that insertion sites of bypass grafts are located distal to sites of acute thrombosis and consequently decrease cardiac morbidity and mortality associated with plaque rupture.

Robustness of late lumen loss in discriminating drug-eluting stents across variable observational and randomized trials.

Background: Binary angiographic and clinical restenosis rates can vary widely between clinical studies, even for the same stent, influenced heavily by case-mix covariates that differ among observational and randomized trials intended to assess a given stent system. We hypothesized that mean in-stent late loss might be a more stable estimator of restenosis propensity across such studies.

Methods And Results: In 46 trials of drug-eluting and bare-metal stenting, increasing mean late loss was associated with higher target lesion revascularization (TLR) rates (P<0.