Synergy Between Stent and Drugs to Avoid Ischemic Recurrences After Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

This is a randomized, multi-center, open-label, study to evaluate the efficacy and safety profile of prolonged dual antiplatelet treatment (i.e. up to 2-year) with aspirin and clopidogrel after coronary stenting compared to currently recommended antiplatelet regimens (i.e. dual antiplatelet treatment for minimum 1 month after BMS or 6 months after DES implantation). As the degree of intimal hyperplasia (IH) suppression provided by the coronary stent system may be expected to influence the comparison between conventional versus prolonged dual antiplatelet treatment (DAT), patients in each group will be further randomized to no (BMS), intermediate (Endeavor), moderately high (Taxus) or very high (Xience V) degree of IH suppression so to minimize the confounding role of IH suppression on the primary hypothesis. Patients will be then follow-up on a clinical basis at 1, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months for the primary hypothesis and then every year up to five for secondary hypotheses. In the conventional dual antiplatelet therapy group receiving one or more BMS implantation at the time of PCI, length of DAT may be influenced by acuity of clinical presentation. According to the CURE study (JAMA. 2002 Nov 20;288(19):2411-20), patients presenting with non-ST segment elevation acute coronary syndromes may be felt to require longer than 1 month DAT. Thus, to impose 1-month only of DAT duration after PCI may be not regarded as conventional at current stage. Based on this consideration, the protocol will allow extension of DAT up to 6 months after PCI in the conventional BMS group in those patients satisfying the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the CURE study at discretion of the treating physician.Extension of DAt up to 6 months after BMS in patients with STEMI is not recommended byt will be allowed as per protocol Dual antiplatelet treatment refers to the use of Aspirin at doses ranging from 75 up to 325 mg/day p.o. in conjunction with clopidogrel (75 mg/day). Ticlopidine (250 mg/ twice a day) is a second-choice drug and it will be allowed in cases where clopidogrel is not well tolerated or unavailable. Clopidogrel and ticlopidine are equipotent antiplatelet agents. Both of them belong the class of thienopyridines and they act by inhibiting the the P2Y12 ADP receptor on platelets.