Comparison of transradial and transfemoral approaches for percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with acute coronary syndrome and anemia

Anemia is an independent predictor of bleeding complications and poor clinical outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention. Percutaneous coronary transradial intervention (TRI) is better than percutaneous coronary transfemoral intervention (TFI) in terms of reducing bleeding complications that can affect the prognosis. This study aims to investigate the clinical outcomes between TRI and TFI for patients with anemia. We analyzed periprocedure complications, in-hospital mortality, and major adverse cardiac events for one year in the Korean TRI registry from January 2013 to April 2014. Patients with chronic kidney disease for whom TFI is preferred were excluded. Anemia was defined as hemoglobin <13 g/dl for men and <12 g/dl for women. A total of 1,279 patients were finally enrolled. Of these, 348 patients had anemia. Among them, 253 patients (72.7%) underwent TRI and 95 patients (27.3%) underwent TFI. There were no significant differences of baseline demographic characteristics between the TRI and TFI groups, except for the incidence of dyslipidemia (TRI 23.7% vs TFI 12.6%, p = 0.023). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed lower incidence of composite severe bleeding complications (hazard ratio 0.34, 95% CI 0.12 to 0.99, p = 0.049) and lower incidence of in-hospital mortality than TFI group (hazard ratio 0.74, 95% CI 0.62 to 0.88, p = 0.042). In conclusion, this study suggests that the TRI for patients with anemia may be translated into better prognosis in terms of lower rates of bleeding complications and in-hospital mortality.