Effectiveness of and adverse events after percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with mild versus severe renal failure

Patients with renal failure undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) experience reduced procedural success rates and increased in-hospital and long-term follow-up major adverse cardiac events. This study was designed to determine whether the severity of preprocedural renal failure influences the outcomes of patients with renal failure undergoing PCI. We compared the immediate and long-term outcomes of 192 patients with mild renal failure (creatinine 1.6 to 2.0 mg/dl, mean 1.76) with those of 131 patients with severe renal failure (creatinine >2.0 mg/dl, mean 2.90), selected from 3,334 consecutive patients undergoing PCI between 1994 and 1997. Although the overall population with renal failure represents a high-risk group, the severe renal failure cohort had a higher incidence of hypertension, multivessel disease, prior coronary bypass surgery, vascular disease, and congestive heart failure (all p values <0.05), yet had similar angiographic characteristics. Procedural success was higher in the group with severe renal failure (93.7% vs 87.7%, p = 0.04). There were no statistically significant differences in in-hospital mortality (11.5% vs 9.9%, p = 0.7), Q-wave myocardial infarction (0.5% vs 0%, p = 0.4), emergent bypass surgery (0% vs 0%, p = 1.0), and in-hospital major adverse cardiac events (11.5% vs 9.9%, p = 0.7) between the mild and severe renal groups, respectively. Kaplan-Meier analyses showed no statistically significant difference in long-term survival (log rank test, p = 0.1) or event-free survival (log rank test, p = 0.3) between the 2 groups. Finally, creatinine was not identified as an independent predictor of in-hospital or long-term follow-up major adverse cardiac events. In our high-risk population, patients with mild renal insufficiency undergoing PCI experience major adverse outcomes in the hospital and at long-term follow-up similar to those of patients with severe renal failure.