All patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were eligible for this single-centre registry between May 2003 and November 2004. The primary end point of the study was major adverse cardiac events (MACE) at 3 years including myocardial infarction (MI), cardiac death and target vessel revascularization (TVR).
A total of 201 patients received BAS and 204 patients PES. In addition, during the same study period, 184 patients were treated with bare-metal stents (BMS) and 125 patients underwent CABG. Complete follow-up datasets were available in all patients. After 3 years of follow-up, the rate of MACE was 13.9 % for BAS and 23.5 % for PES (adjusted HR 2.0, 95 % CI 1.2–3.2, p = 0.006). This difference was mainly driven by a higher incidence of MI in the PES group (19.1 % ) compared with the BAS (7.5 % ) group (adjusted HR 3.2, 95 % CI 1.7–5.8, p < 0.001). The rate of MACE was 31.5 % in the BMS group and 4 % in the CABG group. At 3 years, stent thrombosis occurred in 15 patients in the PES (7.4 % ) group. There was no stent thrombosis in the BAS group.
After the 3 year follow-up, BAS resulted in better long-term outcome compared with PES with infrequent need for TVR.