Early Discharge After Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Overview

* When Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) is performed expeditiously and at a high-volume centre, it is the optimal approach for ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) . In contrast to the clarity of how to treat STEMI, there is no clear definition for when to discharge and which patient to discharge. * An early discharge strategy may be desired by all parties (financial health care provider, treating physician, nurse, patient, patient's relatives)involved in STEMI. * The main goal in our study is to test the hypothesis that an early discharge strategy within 48-56 hours in patients with successful PPCI is as safe as in those patients who stay longer (96-120 hours) as of a standard procedure.

* Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) has become the optimal reperfusion strategy for ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) when the procedure is performed expeditiously and at a high-volume centre.In contrast to the clarity of how to treat STEMI, there is no clear definition for when to discharge and which patient to discharge. * It is conceivable to discharge patients with successful PPCI as early as possible, because a hospital stay longer than needed may create undesirable outcomes in terms of hospital infections, psychosocial reasons, adequate mobilization and patient comfort. In many tertiary centres with a busy PPCI programme insufficient bed capacity is an ongoing concern and threatens the continuous acceptance of new cases of acute infarctions. In addition, it has been indicated that an early discharge policy may lead to a substantial cost saving. * Although much work has been done in developing and validating risk scores that identify low risk patients, data on the implementation of early discharge strategies have been quite limited There are 3 randomised trials investigating the possibility of early discharge after PPCI. However, certain limitations of these studies are preventing to implement an early discharge strategy in all-comers, particularly because of the underrepresentation of older patients in clinical trials. The verification of this policy is also needed in patients with multivessel disease. The first prospective randomized trial, the PAMI II,7 is partly obsolete as major changes have been made in PPCI with respect to devices and adjunctive medication. The other two randomized trials were single-center pilot studies with small number of patients. * Therefore, the above mentioned literature information warrants to test the reproducibility of safety endpoints in a large scale multicenter trial, prior to application of the early discharge strategy in clinical practice.