Drug Eluting Stents for the Treatment of Small Vessels: Very Late Experience (Up to 7 Years) of the DESIRE Registry Background: In this study, we sought to evaluate the clinical outcomes of patients with coronary lesions in small vessels in a cohort of real world patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stents (DES). consecutive patients from the DESIRE Registry (Drug Eluting Stents In The Real World), with 1,683 lesions in small vessels (< 2.5 mm in

more »

... r) were consecutively submitted to elective or emergency PCI, with 1,818 DES (Cypher TM , 89%; Taxus TM , 7.5%; Xience V TM /Promus TM , 3%; Endeavor, 0.33%; Biomatrix TM , 0.2%) and included in this study. The clinical follow-up of up to 7 years (median, 2.8 years) was completed for 98%, and was obtained at 1, 6, 12 months and then annually. Our objective was to determine the rates of major cardiac events (MACE) during clinical follow-up. Results: Mean age was 64.5 ± 11.7 years, with a prevalence of male patients (76.7%). Diabetes mellitus was observed in 31.6% of the cases and 9.8% had chronic renal failure. Left anterior descending artery was the most frequent vessel treated (43.4%) and two-thirds of the lesions were complex lesions (B2/C). Angiographic success was obtained in 98.8% of the cases. The rate of MACE was 12.8% during followup with 4.5% of cardiac death, 4.2% of acute myocardial infarction, 4.5% of repeat target lesion revascularization and 1.5% of stent thrombosis. Conclusion: In the DESIRE Registry, the use of DES to treat small vessels in non-selected patients was associated with excellent early and late outcomes and low thrombosis rates.