Jornal Internacional de Pesquisa Cardiovascular

An Overview of Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI): Opened-Heart Surgery and Stents

Markku Cairns

Ischemic heart disease is the primary cause of death in the aged population, with acute coronary syndrome accounting for more than 30% of deaths. The rate of population growth among the elderly has surged dramatically and will continue to do so in the future. Clinical trials investigating the obstacles and effects of more invasive treatment techniques such as Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) for that specific portion of the population have been scarce in the past. However, the safety, efficacy, and results of PCI in the elderly have begun to receive more attention, resulting in certain patterns shifting Interventional cardiologists are more hesitant to refer the elderly to PCI for a variety of reasons. Most of these difficult aspects are examined in this review, including the intricacy of coronary lesions, frailty, and hematological and vascular alterations. Furthermore, more advanced technologies such as second- and third-generation stents have been introduced to the PCI platform, several alternative approaches have been adopted, such as the transradial approach and the use of bivalirudin instead of heparin and GP IIb/IIIa inhibitor, and several imaging modalities have been optimized to assess patients outcome and prognosis more accurately, and several imaging modalities have been optimized to assess patients' outcome and prognosis more accurately. Several recent studies have demonstrated that when these tactics are used, better results are achieved. This review also discusses the most recent recommendations for doing PCI in the elderly.