The “Thrombus Aspiration during Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in Acute Myocardial Infarction (TAPAS)” study has announced the results during the SCAI Annual Scientific Sessions in Partnership with ACC i2 Summit in Chicago. The study was conducted for a year and patients suffering from “ST-Elevation acute Myocardial Infarction (STEMI)” participated in the study. STEM1 is a type of heart attack.

The study talked about a special catheter which can be effectively used to vacuum out the loose scrap of plaque and blood clot that break loose during “Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI)”. This helps in increasing the blood flow in the heart muscle of the patients who are experiencing a heart attack. The TAPAS study has analyzed that the clinical outcomes which were clear at 30 days were still found to be good after one year due to deep myocardial perfusion.

Clinicians still find PCI to be the best treatment for STEMI as it is a fast and reliable process to open an artery on the surface of the heart blocked by any blood clot. However still the chances of damage to tissue due to heart attack cannot be overruled as during angioplasty and stenting, there is a fair chance of bits of atherosclerotic plaque and blood clot breaking loose which can block the tiny vessels or stop the microcirculation of blood deep in the heart muscle. In such a case, along with the tissue damage, chances are less for the recovery of heart function and it can be fatal.

The TAPAS study headed by Felix Zijlstra is an attempt to study the efficacy of “Export Aspiration Catheter”. For this, 1,071 patients with STEMI were randomly selected. The two groups of 535 and 536 patients were assigned PCI supported by the export aspiration catheter and conventional techniques respectively.

Researchers made use of myocardial blush grade and the elevated ST-segment on the electrocardiogram to evaluate the quality of myocardial perfusion and found that where blush grade as well as the mortality rates were found to be lower to a great extent among the patients treated with treated with the aspiration catheter. A same kind of highly significant relationship was observed between myocardial blush grade and death, or a combination of death and repeat heart attack.

It was concluded in the study that the clinical condition of a patient could be very well assessed by looking at the degree of blood perfusion into the heart muscle and even one year later, there are lesser chances of death and repeat heart attack after successful removal of debris from the artery from the treated artery during PCI. The results of the TAPAS study were presented by Dr. Zijlstra.

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