- Academic Editor
†These authors contributed equally.
Background: Side branch (SB) occlusion after main vessel stenting is
the main complication in treating coronary bifurcation lesions by provisional
stenting. The Jailed Wire Technique (JWT), recommended by the European
Bifurcation Club, is a standard technique to deal with this issue. The Jailed
Balloon Technique (JBT) has been found to be more effective than the JWT in
clinical practice by some interventionists, but it has not been widely accepted.
In this meta-analysis, we compared the efficacy and safety of JBT and JWT.
Methods: The literature comparing JBT and JWT was systematically
reviewed. Stata/MP 17.0 was used to perform a meta-analysis. The primary
endpoints were major adverse cardiac events (MACE), cardiac death, myocardial
infarction (MI) and target lesion revascularization (TLR). The secondary
endpoints were SB occlusion and SB dissection. Aggregated odds ratios and 95%
confidence intervals were calculated. A sensitivity analysis was conducted
if I
Side branch (SB) occlusion after main vessel stenting is the main complication during treatment of coronary bifurcation lesions by provisional stenting. The Jailed Wire Technique (JWT) has been recommended by the European Bifurcation Club (EBC) as a standard technique to deal with this issue [1]. However, data from several studies revealed that the efficacy of JWT was limited. In most cases, the jailed wire only acted as a marker or path to rescue the compromised SB [2]. Burzotta et al. [3] first proposed the Jailed Balloon Technique (JBT) in 2010, in which a small balloon was jailed in place of a guidewire. With the JBT, the incidence of SB occlusion could be significantly reduced due to the larger spatial occupation. However, to the best of our knowledge, JBT increased the risk of vessel dissection especially in the SB ostium. There is currently no clear evidence as to whether JBT or JWT should be adopted when performing provisional stenting. This systematic review and meta-analysis sought to clarify this issue by comparing the immediate procedural outcomes and long-term follow-up of these two techniques. This meta-analysis was performed in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis and the Cochrane Collaboration guidelines, and has been registered on https://inplasy.com/ (INPLASY202310082).
A systematic literature search was performed with PubMed, Ovid Medline, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane, CNKI, Wanfang and Weipu from the databases inception to January 2023. The search items and strategy were “jailed balloon” or “jailed wire” and “bifurcation”. All relevant references were evaluated for addition once they met the inclusion criteria.
Inclusion criteria included: (1) randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or observational studies comparing the JBT and JWT; (2) studies using drug-eluting stents.
Exclusion criteria included: (1) studies with unclear descriptions of the techniques or endpoints; (2) studies without the specified endpoints; (3) studies of low quality assessed by two independent reviewers; (4) repeated studies; (5) studies whose full text couldn’t be retrieved; (6) conference papers.
Primary endpoints: major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and its individual components including cardiac death, myocardial infarction (MI), target lesion revascularization (TLR).
Secondary endpoints: (1) SB occlusion defined as flow less than thrombolysis in MI (TIMI) 3; (2) SB vessel dissection, detected by angiography, optical coherence tomography or intravascular ultrasound.
DL and HL extracted the data from the enrolled literature and independently assessed the qualities. Any conflict was resolved through discussions with HD. The extracted data included baseline characteristics of the enrolled studies and participants, and specified outcomes. The quality of RCTs was assessed with the Cochrane Collaboration tool [4]. The quality of observational studies was assessed with the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale [5]. Any literature assessed as low quality by two reviewers was excluded.
Aggregated odds ratios (OR) at 95% confidence intervals were calculated with
Stata/MP 17.0 (Lakeway Drive, College Station, TX, USA). Heterogeneity between the studies was explored using the I
Eight databases were searched. From the 218 identified studies, 129 were excluded for being duplicates, 69 were excluded for not meeting the inclusion criteria, two were excluded for not retrieving the full text, and seven were excluded for meeting the exclusion criteria. Two were added by reviewing the relevant references. Finally, 13 studies involving 1789 patients were enrolled, including four published in English and nine published in Chinese [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. The flowchart for identifying these studies is shown in Fig. 1.
Literature retrieval process.
The baseline information of the enrolled studies and participants is displayed in Tables 1A,1B,2 (Ref. [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]). There are nine RCTs and four observational studies. The publication year ranges from 2010 to 2020.
Study | Study type | Study period | Follow-up period | Number of patients (JWT/JBT) | Number of lesions (JWT/JBT) | Male, % (JWT/JBT) | Age, years (JWT/JBT) | History of PCI (JWT/JBT) |
Jin, 2019 [6] | RCT | Jan.2013–May.2015 | 19.0 |
45/44 | 45/45 | 66.7%/70.5% | 65.4 |
6.7%/9.1% |
Zhang, 2022 [7] | RCT | Dec.2016–Apr.2019 | 12.0 months | 141/143 | 141/143 | 68.1%/74.8% | 60.9 |
18.4%/14.0% |
Qu, 2019 [17] | Non-RCT | Jan.2015–Jul.2017 | 12.0 months | 80/40 | 80/40 | 77.5%/75% | 59.5/62 | 17.5%/15% |
Wang, 2021 [8] | RCT | May.2015–Dec.2019 | - | 216/216 | 216/216 | 75.46%/71.76% | 57.28 |
- |
Zeng, 2021 [10] | Non-RCT | Jan.2019–Mar.2020 | - | 30/30 | 30/30 | 70.0%/76.7% | 55.7 |
- |
Sun, 2018 [11] | RCT | Sep.2010–May.2015 | 12.0 months | 40/41 | 40/41 | 62.5%/68.3% | 51.9 |
- |
Jian, 2020 [12] | Non-RCT | Jan.2016–Jun.2018 | 12.0 months | 48/39 | 48/39 | 62.5%/59.0% | 51.3 |
16.7%/15.4% |
Guo, 2021 [14] | RCT | Jul.2019–Aug.2020 | - | 42/42 | 42/42 | 54.8%/59.5% | 56.05 |
- |
Han, 2018 [16] | RCT | Jun.2014–Jun.2017 | 12.0 months | 128/128 | 128/128 | 51.6%/52.3% | 65 |
- |
Liang, 2021 [9] | RCT | Mar.2017–Oct.2018 | 12.0 months | 48/48 | 48/48 | 54.2%/58.3% | 57.37 |
- |
Yang, 2019 [13] | RCT | Jan.2016–Mar.2018 | 6.0 months | 30/30 | 30/30 | 60.0%/66.7% | 64.5 |
- |
Chen, 2021 [15] | RCT | Jan.2019–May.2020 | 12.0 months | 30/30 | 30/30 | 40.0%/56.7% | 66.23 |
- |
Lai, 2018 [18] | Non-RCT | Jan.2014–Jan.2017 | 6.0 months | 20/60 | 20/60 | - | - | - |
JWT, jailed wire technique; JBT, jailed balloon technique; RCT, randomized controlled trails; PCI, percutaneous coronary intervention.
Hypertension (JWT/JBT) | Diabetes mellitus (JWT/JBT) | Hyperlipidemia (JWT/JBT) | Smoker (JWT/JBT) | Medina classification (JWT/JBT) | Lesion location (JWT/JBT) | Diagnosis (JWT/JBT) | Stent type (JWT/JBT) |
73.3%/56.8% | 35.6%/40.9% | 28.9%/25.0% | 37.8%/50.0% | 1.1.1 64.4%/60.0% | LAD 75.6%/82.2% | SA or UA 51.1%/61.4% | Rapamycin-eluting stent 71.1%/80.0% |
1.0.1 13.3%/20.0% | LCX 8.9%/11.1% | NSTEMI 31.1%/15.9% | Paclitaxel-eluting stent 26.7%/20.0% | ||||
0.1.1 22.2%/20.0% | RCA 15.6%/6.7% | STEMI 17.8%/22.7% | Adjuvant tamoxifen-eluting stent 2.2%/0% | ||||
Chronic MI 13.3%/9.1% | |||||||
66.0%/56.6% | 29.8%/28.0% | 40.4%/39.2% | 42.6%/46.2% | 1.0.0 2.1%/2.1% | LAD 83.0%/85.3% | UA 53.9%/67.1% | - |
0.1.0 1.4%/1.4% | LCX 13.5%/12.6% | ||||||
1.1.0 4.3%/7.7% | RCA 3.5%/2.1% | ||||||
1.1.1 63.1%/62.2% | |||||||
0.0.1 0%/0% | |||||||
1.0.1 11.3%/10.5% | |||||||
0.1.1 17.7%/16.1% | |||||||
52.5%/70% | 23.8%/35% | 31.3%/35% | 48.8%/37.5% | 1.1.1 78.8%/77.5% | LAD-D1 70.0%/67.2% | STEMI 13.8%/7.5% | - |
1.0.1 11.25%/12.5% | LAD-LCX 16.3%/17.5% | NSTEMI 27.5%/22.5% | |||||
0.1.1 10.0%/10.0% | LCX-OM 8.8%/5.0% | Angina 58.8%/70% | |||||
LAD-RI 1.3%/7.5% | |||||||
RCA-PD 3.8%/2.5% | |||||||
61.11%/58.33% | 33.80%/30.56% | 95.83%/93.98% | - | 1.0.0, 1.1.0, 0.1.0 22.69%/19.91% | LAD 72.22%/79.17% | - | - |
1.0.1, 1.1.1, 0.1.1 77.31%/80.09% | LCX 19.44%/12.04% | ||||||
RCA 8.33%/8.80% | |||||||
66.7%/60.0% | 43.3%/40.0% | 50.0%/50.0% | 43.3%/40.0% | - | - | - | - |
90.0%/92.7% | 45.0%/41.5% | 72.5%/68.3% | 52.5%/48.8% | - | - | - | Sirolimus-eluting stent 100.0%/100.0% |
64.6%/61.5% | 43.8%/35.9% | 77.1%/69.2% | 52.1%/48.7% | - | LAD 47.9%/56.4% | Prior MI 14.5%/12.8% | - |
LCX 18.8%/12.8% | |||||||
RCA 33.3%/30.8% | |||||||
28.6%/35.7% | 33.3%/21.4% | 16.7%/23.8% | - | - | - | - | - |
56.3%/58.6% | 28.1%/31.0% | 32.8%/35.05% | - | - | LAD/DB 25.8%/26.6% | SA 43.0%/45.3% | - |
LCX/OM 10.2%/10.9% | ACS 20.1%/22.2% | ||||||
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
66.7%/70.0% | 33.3%/30.0% | - | - | - | - | - | - |
- | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
LAD, left anterior descending coronary artery; LCX, left circumflex coronary artery; RCA, right ircumflex coronary artery; OM, obtuse marginal branch; SA, stable angina; UA, unstable angina; STEMI, ST segment elevation myocardial infarction; NSTEMI, non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction; ACS, acute coronary syndromes; MI, myocardial infarction; RI, ramus medianus; PD, posterior descending branch; JWT, jailed wire technique; JBT, jailed balloon technique.
Study | JBT specification |
Jin, 2019 [6] | Jailed balloon and stent balloon inflated simultaneously |
Zhang, 2022 [7] | The jailed balloon was inflated only when necessary |
Qu, 2019 [17] | Jailed balloon and stent balloon inflated simultaneously |
Wang, 2021 [8] | The jailed balloon was inflated routinely after dilating the stent |
Zeng, 2021 [10] | The jailed balloon was inflated only when necessary after dilating the stent |
Sun, 2018 [11] | Jailed balloon and stent balloon inflated simultaneously |
Jian, 2020 [12] | The jailed balloon was inflated routinely after dilating the stent |
Guo, 2021 [14] | Jailed balloon and stent balloon inflated simultaneously |
Han, 2018 [16] | Jailed balloon and stent balloon inflated simultaneously |
Liang, 2021 [9] | The jailed balloon was inflated only when necessary after dilating the stent |
Yang, 2019 [13] | - |
Chen, 2021 [15] | Jailed balloon and stent balloon inflated simultaneously |
Lai, 2018 [18] | The jailed balloon was inflated only when necessary after dilating the stent/Jailed balloon and stent balloon inflated simultaneously |
JBT, jailed balloon technique.
The quality assessments of the RCTs are presented in Fig. 2. The quality assessments of the observational studies are shown in Table 3 (Ref. [10, 12, 17, 18]).
Quality assessment of the RCTs with Cochrane Collaboration’s tool. RCTs, randomized controlled trials.
MACE was reported in seven studies [6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 17]. I
Funnel plot for publication bias evaluation of MACE (A), cardiac death (B), MI (C), TLR (D), SB occlusion (E), and SB dissection (F). MACE, major adverse cardiac events; MI, myocardial infarction; TLR, target lesion revascularization; SB, side branch.
Forest plot for comparisons of MACE between JBT and JWT. MACE, major adverse cardiac event; JBT, jailed balloon technique; JWT, jailed wire technique. Studies in blue font are randomized controlled trails, while those in orange font are observational studies.
Cardiac death was reported in five studies [6, 7, 9, 12, 18]. I
Forest plot for comparisons of cardiac death between JBT and JWT. JBT, jailed balloon technique; JWT, jailed wire technique. Studies in blue font are randomized controlled trails, while those in orange font are observational study.
MI was reported in nine studies [6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18]. I
Forest plot for comparisons of MI between JBT and JWT. MI, Myocardial infarction; JBT, jailed balloon technique; JWT, jailed wire technique. Studies in blue font are randomized controlled trails, while those in orange font are observational studies.
TLR was reported in eight studies [6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]. I
Forest plot for comparisons of TLR between JBT and JWT. TLR, target lesion revascularization; JBT, jailed balloon technique; JWT, jailed wire technique. Studies in blue font are randomized controlled trails, while that in orange font is an observational study.
SB occlusion was reported in ten studies [6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18]. I
Forest plot for comparisons of side branch occlusion between JBT and JWT. JBT, jailed balloon technique; JWT, jailed wire technique. Studies with label of blue font were randomized controlled trails, while orange font were observational studies.
SB dissection was reported in three studies [6, 9, 14]. I
Forest plot for comparisons of side branch dissection between JBT and JWT. JBT, jailed balloon technique; JWT, jailed wire technique. Studies with label of blue font were randomized controlled trails.
Coronary bifurcation lesions constitute 15–20% of percutaneous coronary interventions. SB occlusion caused by carina or plaque shift could lead to perioperative MI or death. JWT has been recommended by the EBC as a routine maneuver to prevent SB occlusion or facilitate rescuing a compromised SB. However, clinical practice revealed that the preventative effect of JWT was limited. JBT appears to decrease SB occlusion, but it has not been widely accepted in clinical practice due to a lack of clinical studies.
As far as we know, this is the first systematic review and meta-analysis to compare the JWT and JBT. In this present review, 13 studies were reviewed and six endpoints were analyzed. The heterogeneity between these studies was small. No evidence of publication bias was observed. According to the results, the individual rates of cardiac death, MI, and TLR were not significantly different between the techniques. However, the composite of MACE, as well as the secondary endpoints of SB occlusion and dissection were significantly lower in the JBT group. However, JWT is favored for its lower rates of dissection in clinical practice. In the literature, JBT has been shown to increase the risk of dissection, especially when the jailed balloon is inflated [19, 20]. Since these reports were single-arm studies, they were not enrolled in this review. We can conclude from this meta-analysis that JBT is a more effective and safer technique by reducing both procedural SB occlusion and long-term MACE.
The reasons that JBT performed better than JWT include: (1) larger spatial occupation to prevent carina or plaque shift; (2) prompt dilation to restore SB flow once it was compromised; and (3) angle modifier facilitating SB rewiring.
Another issue we should be concerned with is balloon entrapment. Through searching the relative literature, we only find one case of balloon entrapment in a calcified lesion [21], but lots of wire entrapment when adopting JWT. Balloon entrapment never happened in our own experience. This might attribute to hydrophilic coating of a balloon. Furthermore, we could retrieve the jailed balloon after successive maneuvers of inflating and deflating it.
After Burzotta et al. [3] proposed JBT in 2010, it was further modified by different versions, such as modified JBT, jailed semi-inflation technique, balloon stent kissing technique and so on [22, 23, 24]. They differed mainly in the balloon positions, inflation pressure and timing. It was still not clear which version performed best. However, results of this meta-analyis would suggest that JBT was better than JWT. Further clinical evidences and net-work meta-analysis are needed to compare the different JBTs.
The main limitations of this study are: (1) the sample size was relatively small; (2) the definitions of endpoints varied across different studies; and (3) the techniques of JBT differed amongst the studies.
JBT can prevent SB occlusion more effectively and did not cause any increase in immediate or long-term complications. JBT or its modified versions might be the technique of choice in treating those SBs with a high risk of occlusion.
SB, side branch; MV, main vessel; JWT, jailed wire technique; EBC, European bifurcation club; JBT, jailed balloon technique; RCT, randomized controlled trials; MACE, major adverse cardiac events; MI, myocardial infarction; TLR, target lesion revascularization; TIMI, thrombolysis in myocardial infarction; OCT, optical coherence tomography; IVUS, intravascular ultrasound; NOS, Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale.
All Template data collection forms, data extracted from included studies, data used for all analyses, and analytic code in the review are publicly available.
WG and DL concepted this work. DL, HL and HD collected the data and assessed the literature quality. CG and PY designed this work. DL and CG drafted the paper. WG, HL, HD and PY revised the paper. WG is the first corresponding author. All authors have participated sufficiently in the work and approved the submission of this present manuscript. All authors agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Not applicable.
Not applicable.
This work was funded by Tangdu Innovative Development Project (2021LCYJ044).
The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funder didn’t play any role in study conception, data analysis, or manuscript writing. There was no competing interest.
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