ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Coronary artery stenting has made percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for revascularization of patients with unprotected left main coronary artery (LMCA) disease safer (1). Moreover, drug-eluting stents (DES), together with advances in periprocedural and postprocedural adjunctive pharmacotherapies, have improved outcomes of PCI for these patients (2-9). In fact, compared with bare-metal stents (BMS), DES reduced the incidence of angiographic restenosis and subsequently the need of repeat revascularization (2-4). In the early series of studies for unprotected LMCA stenosis, the one-year incidence of repeat revascularization after DES implantation was 2% to 19%, as compared with 12% to 31% after BMS implantation (2-4).
