Stainless steel and small amounts of nickel, chromium molybdenum and other contaminants tends to produce a foreign body reaction when implanted in human coronary arteries. The goal of “passive coatings” is to make the stent as neutral as possible to this recognition. The two most common approaches utilized in the clinical setting are to coat the stent with phosphorylcholine or with carbon ions. Carbon-coated stents are widely used in different clinical settings and several companies have designed and developed stents with different technology to coat the stainless steel. The initial enthusiasm for these new devices arose from several in vitro and animal studies.

Systolic compression (milking) of the coronary arteries is almost always due to the existence of myocardial bridging. The prevalence of myocardial bridging ranges from 0.5% to 16% of patients submitted to coronary angiography, and is usually located at the proximal or mid segment of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD).1–3
Ocassionally, systolic compression may be caused by a systolic expansion of a left ventricular aneurysm.4 We present a patient with a post-infarction left ventricular aneurysm in whom coronary angiography showed a milking-like effect with systolic compression of the distal LAD.

Dear Readers,

This issue of the Journal of Invasive Cardiology includes original research articles, a special medical informatics update, interesting case reports, and articles from the Journal special sections “Clinical Decision Making” and “Clinical Images”.

In the first original research paper, Dr. Christian Hamm and collaborators from the Department of Cardiology at the Kerckhoff Heart Center in Bad Nauheim, the University Hospital in Frankfurt and the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany present their study of short-term and 6-month follow-up of a peptide-coated ePTFE stent-graft used to treat degenerated saphenous vein grafts. All devices were successfully placed and the 6-month restenosis rate was reported to be 21%. They conclude that the device is safe and effective in treating this difficult lesion type and appears to minimize the need for adjunct distal protection.

Congenital coronary arteriovenous fistula (CAF) is a rare anomaly. The incidence of congenital cardiac lesions is only 0.13%.1 Over 90% of these fistulas drain into the systemic venous side of the circulation.2 Drainage of the fistula into the pulmonary trunk has been reported in 17% of cases.2 To the best of our knowledge, a connection between the left main stem and main pulmonary artery has been reported in the literature only once, as a case in India in 1989.3

Case Report. A 51-year-old female with hypertension was admitted to the hospital with her first attack of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). There was no evidence of heart failure. The electrocardiogram revealed sinus rhythm with Q-waves on precordial leads V2 to V4, with a negative T-wave. Maximal creatine kinase elevation was 1,500 IU at 24 hours after the onset of clinical symptoms. During the hospitalization, the patient had 2 episodes of post-infarction angina.

Implantation of stainless-steel stents has improved the results of percutaneous coronary revascularization.1,2 However, in various subsets of lesions, especially in the presence of complex lesion morphology, in-stent restenosis due to late neointimal hyperplasia occurs in up to 50% of cases3–5 requiring repeated coronary interventions including intravascular brachytherapy.6,7 Various passive stent coatings have been proposed to reduce thrombus formation and intimal hyperplasia following stent implantation.8–10 However, none of these stent coatings have proven to prevent in-stent restenosis. Although the recent use of antiproliferative drugs loaded on coronary stents has shown to efficiently control intimal hyperplasia in de novo coronary lesions as demonstrated by the landmark RAVEL study,11 long-term clinical experience with this approach is still limited.

Percutaneous interventions of degenerated saphenous vein grafts (SVGs) are associated with high rates of distal embolic events and in-stent restenosis.1 Recent experience with covered stents suggests that these types of devices may be a promising alternative to bare stents or repeat bypass surgery in the treatment of diseased saphenous vein grafts.2–4 A new, ePTFE stent graft (Figure 1) has been developed, which incorporates a synthetic, cell-adhesion peptide (P-15) surface treatment.5 Pre-clinical studies of this device in the porcine model have demonstrated a rapid and complete regeneration of an endothelial layer on the inner surface of the ePTFE graft material in as early as 7 days.5 Longer-term studies in Yucatan mini-swine resulted in excellent patency at 6 weeks and 6 months, with minimal intimal thickening averaging about 50 mm over both the graft material and stent struts. There was no evidence of inflammatory or thrombotic response to the peptide treated devices.

For patients treated with coronary bypass surgery, atherosclerotic peripheral arterial disease may compromise blood flow to more distally located arterial bypass grafts. In most instances, proximal subclavian artery stenosis limits flow to the left internal mammary artery (LIMA) graft, resulting in myocardial ischemia. Although percutaneous revascularization of the subclavian artery to relieve ischemia related to the LIMA graft has been described,1–3 catheter-based revascularization of other peripheral arteries to treat steal phenomena from additional arterial conduits is not well characterized. This report describes successful common hepatic artery angioplasty and stenting to treat ischemic symptoms in a patient with a right gastroepiploic artery (GEA) coronary bypass graft.

Diabetic patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) have poorer long-term prognosis with more revascularization procedures than non-diabetic patients regardless of the initial treatment strategy.1,2 The role of percutaneous versus surgical revascularization as the initial treatment strategy for diabetic patients remains controversial. The Bypass Angioplasty Revascularization Investigation (BARI) trial found that diabetic patients with Multivessel coronary artery disease randomized to an initial strategy of PCTA versus CABG surgery had significantly higher mortality rates (34.7% versus 19.1%) after five years.3

Diabetes mellitus is a public health problem of increasing importance in both the developed and developing worlds.1 The prevalence of obesity, the metabolic syndrome, and in particular diabetes, continues to increase; the impact on present and future healthcare resources is substantial. Since more than 75% of all diabetic patients die of atherosclerotic coronary heart disease, cardiologists are at the forefront of efforts, along with endocrinologists, to treat patients with established diabetes and coronary heart disease. Efforts to reduce the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease must include aggressive primary prevention, including interventions to reduce the prevalence of obesity and improve nutrition.

Case Report. A 53-year-old male was admitted to our hospital complaining of persistent chest pain. He was diagnosed as having acute posterior myocardial infarction based on the clinical findings of ST segment elevation in posterior ECG leads and echocardiographic posterior-lateral wall motion abnormality. Emergency coronary angiography (CAG) revealed total occlusion of the distal left circumflex coronary artery. The culprit lesion was successfully treated with primary implantation of a 4.0 X 13 mm ACS Multi-Link RX Tristar stent (Guidant Corporation, Santa Clara, California). CAG also revealed a 90% stenosis of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD). Directional coronary atherectomy (DCA) for the LAD lesion was planned one month later.