Impact of the Occlusion Duration on the Performance of J-CTO Score in Predicting Failure of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention for Chronic Total Occlusion.

Objectives: The present study examined the association between Multicenter CTO Registry in Japan (J-CTO) score in predicting failure of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) correlating with the estimated duration of chronic total occlusion (CTO).

Background: The J-CTO score does not incorporate estimated duration of the occlusion.

Methods: This was an observational retrospective study that involved all consecutive procedures performed at a single tertiary-care cardiology center between January 2009 and December 2014.

Results: A total of 174 patients, median age 59.5 years (interquartile range [IQR], 53-65 years), undergoing CTO-PCI were included. The median estimated occlusion duration was 7.5 months (IQR, 4.0-12.0 months). The lesions were classified as easy (score = 0), intermediate (score = 1), difficult (score = 2), and very difficult (score ≥3) in 51.1%, 33.9%, 9.2%, and 5.7% of the patients, respectively. Failure rate significantly increased with higher J-CTO score (7.9%, 20.3%, 50.0%, and 70.0% in groups with J-CTO scores of 0, 1, 2, and ≥3, respectively; P<.001). There was no significant difference in success rate according to estimated duration of occlusion (P=.63). Indeed, J-CTO score predicted failure of CTO-PCI independently of the estimated occlusion duration (P=.24). Areas under receiver-operating characteristic curves were computed and it was observed that for each occlusion time period, the discriminatory capacity of the J-CTO score in predicting CTO-PCI failure was good, with a C-statistic >0.70.

Conclusion: The estimated duration of occlusion had no influence on the J-CTO score performance in predicting failure of PCI in CTO lesions. The probability of failure was mainly determined by grade of lesion complexity.