Effect of delayed percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty of occluded coronary arteries after acute myocardial infarction.

Whether angioplasty of occluded vessels after myocardial infarction may have beneficial effects on left ventricular function remains unknown. Patients with a first myocardial infarction and thrombolytic therapy who had an occluded infarct-related vessel at delayed coronary angiography were referred systematically for an elective coronary angioplasty performed between 3 and 4 weeks after the myocardial infarction. All patients underwent stress-redistribution-reinjection thallium-201 single-photon emission computed tomography for myocardial viability assessment. Prior angioplasty, a quantitative evaluation of global and regional left ventricular function, was performed. The study group consisted of 38 patients (aged 57 +/- 10 years); 18 had anterior wall infarctions and 20 inferior wall infarctions, but before angioplasty 3 had a patent artery and were excluded. Angioplasty was successful in 30 patients. At follow-up 13 patients (43%) had an occluded coronary artery. In contrast with patients with an occluded coronary artery at follow-up, those with a patent coronary artery had no left ventricular enlargement and had an improvement in both left ventricular ejection fraction (from 48 +/- 9% to 52 +/- 9.8%, p = 0.002) and regional wall motion index (delta = +0.95 SD, p <0.01). In patients with a patent vessel at follow-up, there was a positive correlation between the number of myocardial viable segments and improvement of the infarct zone wall motion (r = 0.52; p = 0.035), and the number of necrotic segments at baseline was positively correlated to the 4-month changes in end-diastolic volume indexes (r = 0.6; p = 0.04). Thus, elective revascularization of occluded coronary arteries with viable myocardium after myocardial infarction improves left ventricular function and lessens remodeling if the artery remains patent during follow-up.