GPI Antiplatelet Therapy Shown to Reduce Mortality for Angioplasty Patients

October 19, 2015—The American College of Cardiology (ACC) announced the publication of a study showing that patients with acute coronary syndrome who have undergone angioplasty have a reduced risk of all-cause in-hospital mortality, but an increased risk of bleeding when given glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors (GPI) after the procedure. David M. Safley, MD, et al published the findings in Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC): Cardiovascular Interventions (2015;8:1574–1582).

According to ACC, the investigators used data from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry CathPCI Registry to assess records from 970,865 patients with an acute coronary syndrome between July 2009 and September 2011. Despite advances in stent design and new anticoagulants, such as bivalirudin, the study found that almost one-third of the cases in the study were treated with GPI.

After adjusting for many factors, including age, gender, race, insurance status, smoking status, family history of premature coronary artery disease, and previous heart attack, relative risk reductions in mortality ranged from 10% to 28%. The risk reduction in mortality was enhanced in patients with myocardial infarction. However, after risk adjustments, GPI use was associated with an increased risk of major bleeding.

In the ACC press release, Dr. Safley commented, “These findings suggest that in the modern era of angioplasty, there may still be a role for the judicious use of GPI in high-risk patients, particularly if heparin, instead of bivalirudin, is used for anticoagulation, as it was in over one-half of patients included in this study.” Additionally, Dr. Safley stated that this registry-based study was able to address some of the limitations of previous randomized trials on GPI, which included mostly lower-risk patients and did not measure mortality. Dr. Safley is Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in Kansas City, Missouri.

The ACC advised that an accompanying editorial by A. Michael Lincoff, MD, in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, noted the limitations due to the observational nature of the analysis (2015;8:1583–1585). He wrote, “Without randomization, any observed associations between the treatment variable (GPI) and outcome cannot be proven to be causative.” While acknowledging the robustness of the statistical methods used, Dr. Lincoff commented in the editorial,  “There is no advantage of GPI over bivalirudin, and the latter strategy reduces bleeding.” Dr. Lincoff is Vice-Chairman of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.