Glycoprotein Inhibitor for High-Risk Angioplasty Patients

A study has shown that treating patients with high-risk acute coronary syndrome with a glycoprotein (GP) IIb-IIIa inhibitor before interventional procedures such as angioplasty can reduce the in-hospital incidence of death or subsequent heart attacks.

The study involved 5,971 patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), of whom 37% were treated with a GP IIb-IIIa inhibitor before being taken to the catheterization lab and 63% were treated with the inhibitor at the time of the procedure. The in-hospital incidence of death and combined death or reinfarction was 1.32% for patients who received the inhibitor early, compared to 1.53% who received it later.

"The data are significant because they suggest that earlier use of GP IIb-IIIa inhibitors, before the patient is taken to the catheterization lab, could directly improve patient outcomes,” said Matthew Roe, M.D., a principal investigator and the co-author of the study.

The data were collected from a national quality improvement initiative that retrospectively examined the treatment of high-risk chest pain in hospitals in the United States. The initiative was led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute (Durham, NC, USA; www.dcri.duke.edu). Although the results of the analysis are consistent with previous results of randomized clinical trials, the use of a GP IIb-IIIa inhibitor before catheterization remains low, the researchers noted.




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