Aims: Recent trials with different designs indicated that drug-eluting stents may be superior to vascular brachytherapy (VBT) for the treatment of in-stent restenosis (ISR). We performed a randomised, double-centre, clinical, quantitative coronary angiographic (QCA) and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) acute and 3-years comparison of 90Sr/90Y-VBT and sirolimus-eluting stent implantation (SES) for ISR.
Methods and results: Ninety-one (91) consecutive patients were included. By QCA, SES led to a higher acute gain (2.08 ± 0.41 mm vs. 1.54 ± 0.70 mm, p < 0.0001), higher postprocedural minimum lumen diameter (2.76 ± 0.39 mm vs. 2.39 ± 0.52 mm; p < 0.0001), lower late lumen loss at follow-up (0.09 ± 0.29 vs. 0.39 ± 0.79 mm, p = 0.042), and a higher net lumen gain of the target lesion (2.05 ± 0.51 vs 1.18 ± 1.08 mm, p < 0.0001). By IVUS, the smaller acute gain following VBT was the result of residual intima hyperplasia, the intima hyperplasia formation following SES was extremely low, and the edge-effect was virtually absent after SES, respectively. At 6-month follow-up, both the angiographic restenosis rate (4.7 vs. 22.7%; p < 0.0001) and target lesion revascularisation rate (2.3 vs. 10.4%; p = 0.025) were lower in SES. Importantly, SES showed a stable clinical course at 3-year follow-up while VBT was associated with a sustained incidence of target vessel failure (11.6 vs. 46.7%; p < 0.0001).
Conclusions: SES for ISR is associated with superior QCA, IVUS and clinical results at 6-month and 3-year of follow-up when compared with VBT.