Abstract
Background:
In a universal health care system, we examined variations in treatment strategies and clinical outcomes in a contemporary cohort of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients.
Methods:
Hospitalization claims of 15,264 patients with ACS between April 1, 2010 and March 2012 were deterministically linked to the Alberta Provincial Project for Outcomes Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease (APPROACH) angiographic database. We compared baseline characteristics and use of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures across 3 invasive sites. For patients who underwent an invasive strategy, we examined 1-year rates of death and repeat revascularization.
Results:
Of the study cohort, 14.3% were medically treated at 91 non-invasive hospitals without transfer to an invasive site and had a 9.3% rate of in-hospital death. The remaining patients were admitted or transferred to one of the three invasive sites (A 5935 pts [40.4% transfer]; B 3910 pts [47.1% transfer]; C 3243 pts [57.4% transfer]). The majority were treated with an invasive strategy: A 87.4%, B 88.9%, C 90.1%, p<0.001). Patient characteristics according to invasive site are reported below (Table). Most notable are the dissimilar rates of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) along with the different use of drug-eluting stents (DES). Mortality rates were similar (in-hospital and 1-year). However, significant differences in one-year repeat revascularization were observed.
Conclusion:
Results from this large contemporary Canadian study suggest variation in revascularization strategies exist resulting in differences in clinical outcome at one year. Further investigations are warranted to allow alignment of best practice and patient outcomes for patients with ACS.