Usefulness of Thrombus Aspiration for the Treatment of Coronary Stent Thrombosis

Current treatment for coronary stent thrombosis (ST) often lacks satisfactory results and clinical outcome is poor. We investigated the impact of manual thrombus aspiration during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) on myocardial reperfusion and clinical outcome in patients with angiographically proved ST. We interrogated our PCI registry for patients with a first stent placement from January 2002 through May 2010 who had undergone an emergency repeated PCI procedure and systematically reviewed coronary angiograms and hospital records for evidence of ST. We identified 113 patients with ST. Thrombus aspiration was used in 51 patients and 62 patients received conventional PCI. Histopathologic analysis of thrombus aspirates was performed in 6 patients. Use of thrombus aspiration predicted postprocedure Thrombolysis In Myocardial Infarction grade 3 flow (odds ratio 3.16, 95% confidence interval 1.22 to 8.17, p = 0.018) and myocardial blush grade 2/3 (odds ratio 3.20, 95% confidence interval 1.20 to 8.55, p = 0.020) after multivariable adjustment with bootstrap model selection. Distal embolization was lower in the thrombus aspiration group compared to the conventional PCI group (14% vs 37%, p = 0.017). In most patients, aspirated thrombus was large and contained platelet and erythrocyte components at histopathologic analysis. Mortality in the thrombus aspiration group and conventional PCI group was 9.8% versus 16% at 30 days (p = 0.351) and 12% versus 21% at 1 year (p = 0.220), respectively. In conclusion, use of manual thrombus aspiration in patients with ST was associated with greater epicardial and microvascular myocardial reperfusion. In addition, mortality was lower in patients treated with thrombus aspiration, although not statistically significant.