Comparison of a polymer-free rapamycin-eluting stent (YUKON) with a polymer-based paclitaxel-eluting stent (TAXUS) in real-world coronary artery lesions.

BACKGROUND: In selected patient cohorts the polymer-free rapamycin-eluting YUKON stent (A) has demonstrated noninferiority compared with the polymer-based paclitaxel-eluting TAXUS stent (B). To test for equivalency in unselected real-world patients with coronary lesions of various complexities, we retrospectively compared both stent designs.

METHODS: A total of 410 patients with symptomatic CAD were successfully treated with A (n = 205) or with B (n = 205). Baseline clinical characteristics, coronary lesion location, lesion length, and the number of stents implanted per lesion were equally distributed between the treatment groups. All patients underwent QCA-analysis at baseline. Clinical follow-up with assessment of MACE and noncardiac deaths was obtained at 30 days and 6 months.

RESULTS: Nominal stent diameter was 2.96 +/- 0.38 mm in Group A vs. 3.05 +/- 0.42 mm in Group B (P = 0.2); nominal length of stented segmentwas 22.97 +/-13.0 mm vs. 23.63 +/- 10.0 (P = 0.56). Analysis of MACE after 6 months resulted in one angiographically documented stent thrombosis causing MI in B (0.2%) vs. none in A. No other MI or cardiac deaths occurred in either group, while two noncardiac deaths in A (1.0%) were reported. Fifteen target lesion revascularizations (7.3%) were performed in A vs. 7 (3.4%) in B. Differences in study endpoints at 6 months did not reach statistical significance (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: Up to 6 months after PCI of real-world coronary lesions, there were no statistically significant differences in MACE between patients treated with the polymer-free rapamycin-eluting YUKON stent and the polymer-based paclitaxel-eluting TAXUS stent.