Outcomes of Intravascular Ultrasound-Guided Percutaneous Coronary Intervention Among Patients With Acute Coronary Syndrome

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) use in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) improves outcomes. However, data on outcomes of IVUS-guided PCI in patients presenting with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is scarce. Therefore, we sought to study the utilization rate and outcomes of IVUS-guided PCI in patients with ACS. Using the National Readmission database, we identified all patients with ACS who underwent PCI from 2016 to 2019. We used a 1:1 propensity-matched analysis to compare the outcome of patients with ACS who underwent PCI with and without IVUS. In 1,263,997 patients with ACS, 563,521 (44.6%) underwent PCI without IVUS and 40,095 (3.17%) underwent IVUS-guided PCI. A Propensity scored matched comparison of PCI with and without IVUS showed IVUS-guided PCI was associated with a lower risk of in-hospital mortality (odds ratio 0.74, 95% confidence interval 0.64 to 0.85, p <0.01) compared with PCI without IVUS. The utilization of IVUS increased from 2.64% in 2016 to 4.10% in 2019, p <0.001. In conclusion, IVUS-guided PCI is associated with lower in-hospital mortality in patients with ACS, yet the current utilization of IVUS-guided PCI remains low across the United States.