Vessel healings after stenting with different polymers in STEMI patients.

Background: Different stents implantation in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients may influence the long term prognosis by affecting vessel healings after stenting. The aim of this study was to evaluate the vessel healings after implantation of drug eluting stents (DES) with biodegradable or durable polymer or of bare-metal stents (BMS) in patients with acute STEMI.

Methods: This study included 50 patients, who underwent follow up angiogram and optical coherence tomography (OCT) assessment about one year after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for STEMI. According to the initial stents types, these patients were classified to durable (n = 19) or biodegradable polymer sirolimus-eluting stents (n = 15), or BMS (n = 16) groups. The conditions of stent struts coverage and malapposition were analyzed with OCT technique.

Results: A total of 9003 struts were analyzed: 3299, 3202 and 2502 from durable or biodegradable polymer DES, or BMS, respectively. Strut coverage rate (89.0%, 94.9% and 99.3%, respectively), malapposition presence (1.7%, 0.03% and 0 of struts, respectively) and average intimal thickness over struts (76 ± 12 µm, 161 ± 30 µm and 292 ± 29 µm, respectively) were significantly different among different stent groups (all P < 0.001).

Conclusions: Vessel healing status in STEMI patients is superior after implantation of biodegradable polymer DES than durable polymer DES, while both are inferior to BMS.