Long-term health outcomes of young patients with low-complexity coronary disease: a weighted analysis according to revascularization strategy.

Objectives: Age is an important factor weighing on revascularization decisions. We analysed long-term health outcomes of young patients with low-complexity coronary anatomy suitable for both coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), according to revascularization strategy.
Methods: Patients 60 years old or less, undergoing invasive coronary angiography between January 2007 and December 2015, presenting with proximal left anterior descending artery involvement, left main or multivessel disease and a SYNTAX Score ≤22 were retrospectively selected. An inverse probability of treatment weight methodology generated a pseudopopulation with well-balanced characteristics, which was used to estimate the average treatment effect between PCI (n = 374) and CABG (n = 173).
Results: Mean age was 53 ± 7 years old, 27% had diabetes mellitus and 48% presented with an acute coronary syndrome. Mean SYNTAX score was 13.6 ± 4.9 and 68% underwent PCI as index revascularization strategy. In the weighed population, the adjusted hazard of the primary end-point of all-cause death at total follow-up (median 9.3 years; interquartile range 6.9-11.7) was 0.40 (95% confidence interval 0.19-0.7) for CABG vs PCI (incidence rate 5.8 vs 14.0 deaths/1000-person-years). Accounting for death as competing risk, the cumulative hazard of new revascularization (sub-distribution hazard ratio 0.72; 95% confidence interval 0.32-1.25) and any cause hospital readmission (sub-distribution hazard ratio 0.70; 95% confidence interval 0.41-1.07) were lower in CABG patients, as opposed to death/stroke rates at 30 days which were higher with CABG (0.3% vs 1.7%; risk ratio = 5.84).
Conclusions: In this quasi-experimental analysis of young patients with coronary artery disease and an equivalent indication for both PCI and CABG, long-term health outcomes were favourably associated with CABG, as compared to PCI. These observations support the need for dedicated randomized trials with longer follow-up in order to better inform lifetime treatment options.
(© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. All rights reserved.)