Impact of ischemia-guided revascularization with myocardial perfusion imaging for patients with multivessel coronary disease

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of ischemia-guided (IG) revascularization.

Background: The importance of IG revascularization has not been well-determined.

Methods: The outcomes of IG revascularization, in which revascularization was performed in the matched coronary artery with the perfusion abnormality on myocardial perfusion image (MPI), were retrospectively compared with those of non-IG revascularization in a registry of 5,340 patients with multivessel coronary disease comprising 2,587 percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) with drug-eluting stents and 2,753 coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgeries after adjustment with inverse-probability-of-treatment weighting.

Results: The MPI was performed in 42.3% of patients, and IG revascularization was performed in 17.3%, including 12.4% in PCI and 21.8% in CABG patients (p < 0.001). The incidence of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) including death, myocardial infarction, stroke, or repeat revascularization was significantly lower in the IG than in the non-IG group (16.2% vs. 20.7%; adjusted hazard ratio [aHR]: 0.73; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.60 to 0.88; p = 0.001), primarily driven by the lower repeat revascularization rate (9.9% vs. 22.8%; aHR: 0.66; 95% CI: 0.49 to 0.90; p = 0.009). Subgroup analysis showed that IG reduced the risk of MACCE in PCI (17.4% vs. 22.8%; aHR: 0.59; 95% CI: 0.43 to 0.81; p = 0.001) but not in CABG (16.0% vs. 18.5%; aHR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.67 to 1.14; p = 0.31) patients.

Conclusions: Ischemia-guided revascularization with MPI, particularly in PCI-treated patients, seems to decrease the risk of repeat revascularization and MACCE for patients with multivessel disease.