Short-term high-dose atorvastatin for periprocedural myocardial infarction prevention in patients with renal dysfunction.

OBJECTIVES: Short-term high-dose atorvastatin administered before percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) reduces the rate of periprocedural myocardial infarction (pMI) in high-risk patients, such as those with acute coronary syndromes and those with elevated high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. It is unknown whether short-term high-dose administration reduces the rate of pMI in patients with chronic kidney disease. Recently, we observed that in 304 patients with estimated creatinine clearance less than 60 ml/min randomized to receive 80 mg/day of atorvastatin or placebo for 48 h before elective coronary angiography and/or angioplasty, statin administration did not reduce contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN). In this post-hoc analysis, we evaluate the pMI in the subgroup of 161 patients who underwent PCI.

METHODS: In all patients, creatine kinase myocardial isoenzyme (CK-MB) [upper reference limit (URL) 5 ng/ml] was assessed before and at 12 and 24 h after PCI. The pMI, defined as CK-MB elevation more than three times the URL, occurred in 27 (17%) patients.

RESULTS: The incidence of pMI was 10.4% (of 77 patients) in the atorvastatin and 23% (of 84 patients) in the placebo group (P < 0.05). Multivariate analysis identified the pretreatment with high-dose atorvastatin as an independent predictor of reduced risk of pMI [odds ratio 0.39, 95% confidence interval 0.16-0.96, P < 0.05].

CONCLUSION: This post-hoc analysis shows that short-term high-dose atorvastatin administration reduced pMI in patients with renal dysfunction submitted to elective PCI, but without benefit regarding CIN prevention.