Usefulness of rosuvastatin to prevent periprocedural myocardial injury in patients undergoing elective coronary intervention

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether percutaneous coronary intervention-related periprocedural myocardial infarction (MI) can be suppressed more significantly with high- compared with low-dose rosuvastatin. A total of 232 patients scheduled to undergo elective percutaneous coronary intervention within 5 to 7 days were assigned to groups that would receive either 2.5 or 20 mg/day of rosuvastatin (n = 116 each). The incidence of periprocedural MI did not significantly differ between the high and low-dose groups (8.7% vs 18.7%, p = 0.052). In patients who were not taking statins at the time of enrollment, high-dose rosuvastatin significantly suppressed periprocedural MI compared with the low dose (10.5% vs 30.0%, p = 0.037). The difference was not significant in patients who were already taking statins (high vs low dose 7.6% vs 10.6%, p = 0.582). In conclusion, the incidence of percutaneous coronary intervention-related periprocedural MI was reduced more effectively by high-dose than by low-dose rosuvastatin in statin-naive patients. However, low-dose rosuvastatin is sufficient for patients who are already taking statins.