Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in Patients witH OrthotoPic hEart Transplantation: the PCI-HOPE a Multicenter Study

Actual standard of care. Orthotopic heart transplantation (OHT) represents the optimal solution for the cure of end-stage heart failure, but it is burdened by numerous comorbidity. The main cause of morbidity and mortality in these patients is related to Transplant coronary artery disease (TCAD), that affects at least fifth percent of transplanted at five years of transplantation. TCAD is a purely immunological phenomen, emphasized by non-immunological factors, favoring oxidative stress, like dyslipidemia, smoking, hypertension, diabetes.(1-3) Many anatomic-pathological studies showed cellular infiltration with predominance of T-cell, mainly in the neointima and in adventizia. TCAD often resulted without angor because of denervation of the heart after transplantation (4-6). The managment and the treatment of TCAD are somewhat complex, because of accelerated vasal infiltration. Furthermore in multivessel disease a surgery revascularisation presented an elevated surgery risk.

Limits and complications of actual standard of care. In the first era of angioplasty percutaneous therapy was considered like palliation in this kind of coronary lesions , but with the beginning of BMS and DES era the outcomes of these patients considerably improved. However TCAD's lesions showed a rate of restenosis greater than classic atherosclerotic plaques(7). There is also a disagreement of results between implantation of DES or BMS, because some studies showed a superiority of the DES group, others didn't show any significant difference(8-9).

Potential improvements of standard of care. In this retrospective study an interesting point of research would be point out if the risk of restenosis was reduced with a particular kind of medicated stent for local effect of polymers, currently used. The general pharmacological effect of sirolimus was known like inhibitor of cell-T proliferation and then it could reduce vessel cellular infiltration, acting as a local immunosuppressant(10-12).

For this argument evidence is discordant, although the problem is getting relevant due to the prolonged survival of these patients and the augmented number of transplantation. These patients are often young and have an elevated general risk for iatrogenic immunosuppressed state. Therefore with this retrospective study we propose to understand the physio-pathological mechanisms of TCAD and also what actual therapy results the best .