Percutaneous Coronary Intervention at U.S. Hospitals: A Report Card

Inappropriate use of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) generates unnecessary costs and risks for procedural and stent-related complications. Moreover, in stable patients without acute coronary syndromes, PCI provides only a small advantage over medical therapy for symptom relief (JW Cardiol Aug 13 2008). However, a lack of standards for defining appropriateness of PCI has hindered past attempts to improve patient selection. Recently, six U.S. professional organizations jointly developed appropriate use criteria for the use of PCI. Now, investigators have used prospective data from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry of patients undergoing PCI at 1091 U.S. hospitals from July 2009 through September 2010 to classify the indicatio…