Intravascular lithotripsy was noninferior to rotational atherectomy for preparing severely calcified coronary lesions for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), according to a head-to-head trial.
On optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI), acute minimal stent area after PCI was 6.0 mm2 with intravascular lithotripsy preparation versus 5.9 mm2 with rotational atherectomy preparation, reported Benjamin Honton, MD, of Clinique Pasteur in Toulouse, France.
Looking at clinical outcomes, there were no statistically significant differences between groups in terms of target lesion failure at 12 months (2.4% vs 1.2%, P=0.61) or its individual components of cardiac death (1.2% for both), target vessel-related myocardial infarction (1.2% vs 0), and target lesion revascularization (2.4% vs 0).
Honton presented the results of the ICARE OFDI study at the EuroPCR meeting held annually in Paris. The study was simultaneously published in EuroIntervention.
The evidence is growing for intravascular lithotripsy, which is considered an emerging alternative to gold-standard rotational atherectomy as a plaque preparation strategy.
