Impact of renin-angiotensin system inhibitors on long-term clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction treated with successful percutaneous coronary intervention with drug-eluting stents: Comparison between STEMI and NSTEMI

Background and aims: We compared the clinical impact of renin-angiotensin system inhibitors (RASI) on long-term clinical outcomes between ST-segment elevation (STEMI) and non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) after successful percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug eluting stents (DES) because of the paucity of published data. Methods: A total of 24,960 acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients who underwent PCI with DES and were prescribed the RASI were enrolled and divided into two groups, the STEMI group (n = 14,061) and the NSTEMI group (n = 10,899). The clinical endpoint was the occurrence of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) defined as all-cause death, cardiac death (CD), recurrent myocardial infarction (re-MI), total coronary revascularization (target lesion revascularization [TLR], target vessel revascularization [TVR], non-TVR) during 2 years. Results: After propensity score-matched (PSM) analysis, two PSM groups (6762 pairs, n = 13,524, C-statistic = 0.682) were generated. All-cause death (hazard ratio [HR], 1.386; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.114–1.725; p = 0.003) and CD (HR, 1.358; 95% CI, 1.041–1.770; p = 0.024) rates were significantly higher in NSTEMI patients. However, the incidence of MACE, re-MI, total revascularization, TLR, TVR, non-TVR was not significantly different between the two groups. In addition, old age (≥65years), decreased left ventricular ejection fraction (<50%), hypertension, creatine kinase isoenzyme level, cardiogenic shock, cardiopulmonary resuscitation on admission, and PCI within 24 h were common significant independent risk factors of all-cause death and CD. Conclusions: The mortality reduction capability of RASI was more prominent in the STEMI patients compared with the NSTEMI patients.