IMR Press / RCM / Volume 12 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.3909/ricm0563

Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine (RCM) is published by IMR Press from Volume 19 Issue 1 (2018). Previous articles were published by another publisher in Open Access under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with MedReviews, LLC.

Open Access Review
Treatment Options for Patients With Left Main Coronary Artery Disease
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1 Division of Cardiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles,Los Angeles, CA
Rev. Cardiovasc. Med. 2011, 12(2), 77–83; https://doi.org/10.3909/ricm0563
Published: 30 June 2011
Abstract
Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is the gold standard for the treatment of left main disease, whereas percutaneous coronary intervention is a viable option for patients who are candidates for revascularization but ineligible for CABG. CABG is limited by extended hospital stay followed by rehabilitation and mediocre long-term patency of saphenous vein grafts. Drug-eluting stents decrease the restenosis rates compared with bare metal stents and provide comparable clinical outcomes with those of CABG. Patients with isolated left main disease limited to the ostium or midbody are most likely to have good clinical outcomes with low restenosis and stent thrombosis rates. The results of the ongoing EXCEL trial, which compares left main percutaneous coronary intervention with drug-eluting stents and CABG, will provide insight regarding the ideal revascularization strategy for these patients.
Keywords
Left main disease
Drug-eluting stent
Coronary artery bypass surgery
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