In-Hospital Outcome Comparing Bivalirudin to Heparin in Real-World Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Randomized controlled trials have shown conflicting results regarding the outcome of bivalirudin in primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). The aim of this study was to evaluate the in-hospital outcomes of patients receiving heparin or bivalirudin in a real-world setting of PPCI: 7,023 consecutive patients enrolled in the Austrian Acute PCI Registry were included between January 2010 and December 2014. Patients were classified according to the peri-interventional anticoagulation regimen receiving heparin (n = 6430) or bivalirudin (n = 593) with or without GpIIb/IIIa inhibitors (GPIs). In-hospital mortality (odds ratio [OR] 1.13, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.57 to 2.25, p = 0.72), major adverse cardiovascular events (OR 1.18, 95% CI 0.65 to 2.14, p = 0.59), net adverse clinical events (OR 1.01, 95% CI 0.57 to 1.77, p = 0.99), and TIMI non-coronary artery bypass graft-related major bleeding (OR 0.41, 95% CI 0.09 to 1.86, p = 0.25) were not significantly different between the groups. However, we detected potential effect modifications of anticoagulants on mortality by GPIs (OR 0.12, 95% CI 0.01 to 1.07, p = 0.06) and access site (OR 0.25, 95% CI 0.06 to 1.03, p = 0.06) favoring bivalirudin in femoral access. In conclusion, this large real-world cohort of PPCI, heparin-based anticoagulation showed similar results of short-term mortality compared with bivalirudin. We observed a potential effect modification by additional GPI use and access favoring bivalirudin over heparin in femoral, but not radial, access.