Perioperative major adverse cardiac events in urgent femoral artery repair after coronary stenting are less common than previously reported.

Objective: Noncardiac surgery early after coronary stenting has been associated with a high rate of stent thrombosis and catastrophic outcomes. However, those outcomes were mostly seen when dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) was discontinued before surgery. This observational study sought to estimate the risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) after femoral artery repair following recent stent-percutaneous coronary intervention under continued DAPT and to explore potential risk factors. We suspect that in this setting, the risk of MACEs is lower than previously reported.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study included all consecutive patients who underwent femoral artery repair because of puncture site complications (bleeding or occlusion) within 28 days after coronary stenting at a tertiary referral center in Switzerland from 2005 to 2015. The primary end point consisted of the MACEs death, cardiac arrest, stent thrombosis, and myocardial infarction.

Results: There were 12,960 patients who underwent coronary stenting. Seventy patients (0.5%) required repair of the femoral vessels, which was performed under continued DAPT in all cases. Eight patients (11.4%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 5.4-21.8) experienced a total of 17 MACEs within 30 days after surgery, including 5 deaths (7.1%; 95% CI, 2.7-16.6). Factors significantly associated with postoperative MACEs were cardiogenic shock on admission before coronary stenting (hazard ratio, 6.9; 95% CI, 1.8-29.6; P = .035) and limb ischemia as an indication for surgery compared with bleeding (hazard ratio, 10.5; 95% CI, 2.7-40.7; P = .008).

Conclusions: In our series, femoral artery repair under DAPT for access site complications early after stent-percutaneous coronary intervention is associated with only a modest MACE rate and therefore a much better outcome than previously reported.