Five tertiary Italian hospitals enrolled 375 nondiabetic patients with coronary artery disease and no contraindications to dual antiplatelet treatment or corticosteroid therapy in a randomized, controlled study performed between 2007 and 2009. Patients were allocated into 3 study groups: bare metal stents (controls), bare metal stents followed by a 40-day prednisone treatment, or drug-eluting stents. The primary endpoint was the event-free survival of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and recurrence of ischemia needing repeated target vessel revascularization at 1 year as adjudicated by an independent clinical events committee.
One-year follow-up was obtained in all patients. Patients receiving bare metal stents alone as compared to those treated with prednisone or drug-eluting stents had lower event-free survival; the primary endpoint was 80.8 % in controls compared to 88.0 % in the prednisone and 88.8 % in the drug-eluting stent groups, respectively (P = .04 and .006).
Compared with bare metal stents alone, prednisone treatment after bare metal stents or drug-eluting stent implantation result in a better event-free survival at 1 year.