title: Coronary artery bypass surgery and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty in patients with multivessel disease.
abstract: Since its introduction in the early 1970s, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery has been proven to relief anginal symptoms in patients with severe myocardial ischemia. Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) was introduced in clinical practice at the end of the 1970s and this treatment has also been established to be effective. PCI has now surpassed CABG as the most common means for treating coronary artery disease (CAD). However, restenosis remains its Achille's heel. Until the mid-1990s, a coronary reintervention was needed in 35% to 40% of the patients. Since then, interventional techniques and technology have evolved with improved success in more complex and anatomical settings, and restenosis has been now consistently decreased to around 20%. Despite all these improvements, the incidence of restenosis, especially in the 1(st) year, is still an important limitation to PCI. The major determinants of restenosis are elastic recoil, negative vessel remodeling and neointimal proliferation as a response to vessel injury induced by angioplasty devices. The use of conventional stents has provided an efficient method to face the first 2 problems, but neointimal proliferation is not affected by stenting. A new approach consists of using the stent as a drug carrier to the target site in order to inhibit restenosis. The first results of utilization of these fascinating drug-eluting stents (DES) to treat relatively simple lesions are very promising, but further analyses for more complex lesions such as those commonly found in daily practice are needed before any definitive conclusions can be made.
authors.affiliation: Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands. r.vandomburg@erasmusmc.nl
authors.forename: R T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Van Domburg
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Saia
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Lemos
mesh_terms: D015906:Angioplasty, Balloon, Coronary; D001026:Coronary Artery Bypass; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D006801:Humans; D015607:Stents