Clinical characteristics and outcomes among patients undergoing high-risk percutaneous coronary interventions by single or multiple operators: Insights from the veterans affairs clinical assessment, reporting, and tracking program

Abstract

BACKGROUND: High-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (HR-PCI) is increasingly common among contemporary patients with coronary artery disease. Experts have advocated for a collaborative 2-operator approach to support intraprocedural decision-making for these complex interventions. The impact of a second operator on patient and procedural outcomes is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS: Patients who underwent HR-PCI from 2015 to 2018 within the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System were identified. Propensity-matched cohorts were generated to compare the outcomes following HR-PCI performed by a single or multiple (≥2) operators. The primary end point was the 12-month rate of major adverse cardiovascular events. We identified 6672 patients who underwent HR-PCI during the study period; 6211 (93%) were treated by a single operator, and 461 (7%) were treated by multiple operators, with a nonsignificant trend toward increased multioperator procedures over time. A higher proportion of patients treated by multiple operators underwent left main (10% versus 7%, P=0.045) or chronic total occlusion intervention (11% versus 5%, P<0.001). Lead interventionalists participating in multioperator procedures practiced at centers with higher annual HR-PCI volumes (124±71.3 versus 111±69.2; standardized mean difference, 0.197; P<0.001) but otherwise performed a similar number of HR-PCI procedures per year (34.4±35.3 versus 34.7±30.7; standardized mean differ-ence, 0.388; P=0.841) compared with their peers performing single-operator interventions. In a propensity-matched cohort, there was no significant difference in major adverse cardiovascular events (32% versus 30%, P=0.444) between patients who underwent single-operator versus multioperator HR-PCI. Adjusted analyses accounting for site-level variance showed no significant differences in outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Patients who underwent multioperator HR-PCI had similar outcomes compared with single-operator proce-dures. Further studies are needed to determine if the addition of a second operator offers clinical benefits to a subset of HR-PCI patients undergoing left main or chronic total occlusion intervention.