Interventional Cardiology Clinical Benefit of Statin Pretreatment in Patients Undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention A Collaborative Patient-Level Meta-Analysis of 13 Randomized Studies

Background—Previous studies suggested that statin pretreatment reduces cardiac events in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention. However, most data were observational, and single randomized trials included limited numbers of patients. Methods and Results—We performed a collaborative meta-analysis using individual patient data from 13 randomized studies in which 3341 patients received either high-dose statin (nϭ1692) or no statin/low-dose statin (nϭ1649) before percutaneous coronary intervention, with all patients receiving statin therapy after intervention. Occurrence of periprocedural myocardial infarction, defined as postintervention creatine kinase–MB increase Ն3 times the upper limit of normal, and 30-day major adverse cardiac events (death, myocardial infarction, target-vessel revascularization) was evaluated. Incidence of periprocedural myocardial infarction was 7.0% in the high-dose statin versus 11.9% in the control group, which corresponds to a 44% risk reduction in the active-treatment arm (odds ratio by fixed-effects model 0.56, 95% confidence interval, 0.44 to 0.71, PϽ0.00001). The rate of major adverse cardiac events at 30 days was significantly lower in the high-dose statin group (7.4% versus 12.6%, a 44% risk reduction; PϽ0.00001), and 1-month major adverse cardiac events, excluding periprocedural events, were also reduced (0.6% versus 1.4%; Pϭ0.05). The benefit of high-dose statins was realized irrespective of clinical presentation (P for interactionϭ0.43) and was maintained across various subgroups but appeared greater in the subgroup with elevated baseline C-reactive protein levels (nϭ734; 68% risk reduction for periprocedural myocardial infarction versus 31% in those 1861 patients with normal CRP; P for quantitative interactionϭ0.025). Conclusions—High-dose statin pretreatment leads to a significant reduction in periprocedural myocardial infarction and 30-day adverse events in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention. This strategy should be considered in all patients with planned percutaneous coronary intervention. P ercutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) represents the prevalent revascularization strategy in patients with coronary artery disease. Although this procedure is safe and is associated with low rates of severe complications, periproce-dural myocardial infarction, as assessed by cardiac marker elevation, occurs in 5% to 40% of patients, depending on the definition applied, antithrombotic approaches, and clinical/ angiographic risk profile, 1– 4 and it is well known that this complication may negatively impact clinical outcome after intervention. improvement of antithrombotic therapy, have been evaluated to decrease the incidence of cardiac ischemic events during PCI (use of glycoprotein IIb/IIIa antagonists, ␤-blockers, optimization of clopidogrel loading, and new antiplatelet agents). 6 –10 In the last few years, experimental studies demonstrated that statins have cardioprotective effects in the animal model of ischemia/reperfusion, 11,12 …