Procedural Characteristics of Intravascular Ultrasound-Guided Percutaneous Coronary Intervention and Their Clinical Implications

BACKGROUND: Despite the clinical benefits to intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) guidance for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), most patients with coronary artery disease undergo angiography-guided PCI alone in the real-world setting. We sought to investigate the procedural characteristics of IVUS-guided PCI and their clinical outcomes, as compared with angiography-guided PCI. METHODS AND RESULTS: This was a cohort study using patient-level data from the IVUS-XPL (Impact of Intravascular Ultrasound Guidance on the Outcomes of Xience Prime Stents in Long Lesions) and ULTIMATE (Intravascular Ultrasound Guided Drug Eluting Stents Implantation in All-Corners Coronary Lesions) clinical trials. A total of 2848 patients with 3872 native coronary lesions were included and procedural characteristics assessed by quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) were compared between IVUS and angiography guidance. Stent-to-reference vessel diameter ratio (ie, QCA stent sizing) was greater (1.11 +/- 0.16 versus 1.07 +/- 0.14, P<0.001) and high-pressure postdilation was more frequently performed (83.7% versus 75.4%, P<0.001) with IVUS guidance, whereas residual stent edge dissections were more frequent in lesions treated with IVUS guidance (4.6% versus 0.7%, P<0.001). Given the dissection risk, optimal QCA stent sizing for IVUS guidance was a stent-to-QCA reference vessel diameter ratio >= 1.1 to <1.3. Among 1424 patients (1969 lesions) treated with angiography guidance, QCA stent sizing <1.0 was observed in 651 (33.1%) lesions, while QCA stent sizing >= 1.1 to <1.3 was observed in only 526 (26.7%) lesions. Under angiography guidance, patients with both QCA stent sizing >= 1.1 to <1.3 and high-pressure postdilation (235 of 1424, 16.5%) had a lower risk of 3-year target lesion failure compared with others (hazard ratio, 0.532; 95% CI, 0.293-0.966 [P=0.038]). CONCLUSIONS: IVUS-guided PCI resulted in larger QCA-assessed stent sizing and more frequent postdilation with high-pressure inflations. These procedures may further improve long-term clinical outcomes in patients undergoing PCI without IVUS.