Clinical outcomes for single stent and multiple stents in contemporary practice.

Background: Stents had been demonstrated to be safe and effective in the treatment of severe coronary artery disease (CAD); however, the current knowledge on percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in treating patients requiring 2 or more stents placements is still limited.

Hypothesis: Patients who required 2 or more stents might have worse clinical outcomes.

Methods: A total of 2371 patients who underwent stenting were divided into a single stenting group (n = 1233) and a multiple stenting group (n = 1138). We assessed the cumulative incidence of major adverse cardiac events (death, acute myocardial infarction, and target-vessel revascularization) and stent thrombosis during 1-year follow-up.

Results: The 1-year unadjusted cumulative incidence of major adverse cardiac events was 7.7% in the multiple stenting group and 5.4% in the single stenting group (P = 0.02 by log-rank test). After adjustment, there was a trend toward a lower rate of 1-year major adverse cardiac events in the single stenting group than in the multiple stenting group (P = 0.09). A nonsignificant trend was also detected in favor of the single stenting group, as compared with the multiple stenting group, at the rate of acute myocardial infarction (1.3% vs 1.7%, P = 0.89) and at the rate of target-vessel revascularization (4.5% vs 5.4%, P = 0.08).

Conclusions: Although the use of a single stent in coronary artery disease has less incidence of adverse cardiac events at 1 year as compared with the use of multiple stents, the difference was not statistically significant.