Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in Patients Aged 80 Years Old and Above: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background: Ischaemic heart disease remains the main cause of death in the world. With increasing age, frailty and comorbidities, senior patients aged 80 years old and above who undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) are at higher risk of mortality and other complications.

Aims: We aimed to examine the overall outcomes for this group of patients.

Methods: Four databases (PUBMED, EMBASE, SCOPUS and CENTRAL) were searched. Studies with patients aged 80 years old and above who underwent PCI for all indications were included. Pooled outcomes of all-cause death, cardiac death, in-hospital death, subsequent stroke/transient ischaemic attack (TIA), subsequent myocardial infarction (MI), subsequent congestive cardiac failure (CCF), and overall major adverse cardiac events (MACE) were obtained for meta-analysis.

Results: From 2,566,004 patients, the pooled cumulative incidence of death was 19.22%, cardiac death was 7.78%, in-hospital death was 7.16%, subsequent stroke/TIA was 1.54%, subsequent MI was 3.58%, subsequent CCF was 4.74%, and MACE was 17.51%. The mortality rate of all patients was high when followed up for 3 years (33.27%). ST-elevation myocardial infarction patients had more outcomes of in-hospital death (14.24% vs 4.89%), stroke/TIA (1.93% vs 0.12%), MI (3.68 vs 1.55%) and 1-year mortality (26.16% vs 13.62%), when compared to non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction patients.

Conclusions: There was a high mortality rate at 1 year and 3 years post-PCI in the overall population of senior patients aged 80 years old and above, regardless of indication. This necessitates further studies to explore the implications of these observations.