Impact of complete revascularization on long-term clinical outcomes for patients with diabetes mellitus and coronary chronic total occlusion lesion

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a substantial risk factor in developing coronary artery disease (CAD), coronary chronic total occlusion (CTO) lesions are discovering 10–35% in patients who underwent coronary angiography. This study compares the long-term clinical outcomes of two treatment strategies, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with complete recanalization versus medication therapy (MT) with CTO lesion in DM patients with CTO. This study is a single-center, prospective, all-comer registry designed to reflect “real world” practice since 2004. Of a total of 4909 consecutive patients were diagnosed with significant CAD by coronary angiography (CAG). A total of 372 patients has DM and CTO lesions. Patients were divided into the PCI group (n = 184) and the MT group (n = 179). The primary endpoint, defined as the composite of death or myocardial infarction (MI), was compared between the two groups up to 5 years. In addition, inverse probability weighting (IPTW) analysis, derived from the logistic regression model, was performed to adjust for potential confounders. Compared to the MT group, the PCI group was associated with a significantly reduced incidence of the primary endpoint before [hazard ratio; HR 0.267, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.116–0.614] and after (HR 0.142, 95% CI 0.032–0.629) adjusting confounding factors by IPTW. Complete revascularization by CTO-PCI with MT in DM patients should be the preferred treatment strategy compared with the MT alone strategy since it reduces the composite of death or MI up to 5 years.