Background and Objectives: There have been no data regarding the correlations between angiographic late loss (LL) and incomplete neointimal coverage of struts, regarded as the most powerful predictor for drug-eluting stents (DES) thrombosis. Therefore, we evaluated the relationships between angiographic LL and the percent uncovered struts, calculated as percent ratio of uncovered struts on optical coherence tomography (OCT) to total struts in all cross-sections. Methods: From Yonsei OCT registry, a total of 219 lesions without restenosis after DES implantation were grouped into tertiles according to angiographic LL: tertile 1 (LL≤0.26mm), tertile 2 (0.26〈LL≤0.58mm), and tertile 3 (≥0.59mm). The highly uncovered lesions and the incomplete covered lesions were defined as the lesions with % uncovered struts ≥75th percentile (6.0%) and the lesions with the number of uncovered struts on OCT ≥1, respectively. Results: Tertile 1, the lesions with the lowest LL, showed a significantly higher % uncovered strut, compared with tertile 2 or 3 (10.3±12.8% vs. 4.2±7.4% vs. 2.4±5.1%, p<0.001). Angiographic LL significantly correlated with % uncovered struts on OCT (r =-0.340, p<0.001). From the receiver operator characteristics curve analysis, the best cut-off values of LL to predict the highly uncovered or the incompletely covered lesions were 0.29mm [area under curves (AUC) = 0.723, p<0.001] and 0.61mm (AUC = 0.692, p<0.001), respectively. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that there was a significant correlation between angiographic LL and % uncovered struts on OCT and a lesser LL significantly correlated with incomplete neointimal coverage of struts on OCT after DES implantation.
|
