Multislice computed tomography assessment of everolimus-eluting Absorb bioresorbable scaffolds in comparison with metallic drug-eluting stents from the ABSORB Japan randomised trial

Aims: Blooming artefacts limit accurate coronary assessment by multislice computed tomography (MSCT) in metallic stents.We sought to investigate whether bioresorbable vascular scaffolds (BVS) could be better assessed by MSCT.Methods and results: Among 400 patients in the randomised ABSORB Japan trial, a pre-specified MSCT substudy was performed in 98 patients (103 lesions) in the BVS arm and 49 patients (49 lesions) in the cobalt-chromium everolimus-eluting stent (CoCr-EES) arm at 13 months prior to follow-up angiography.The assessability of BVS by MSCT was superior to that of CoCr-EES (94% versus 67%, p<0.001).Blooming artefacts were the main reason CoCr-EES could not be analysed (29%), while marker artefacts precluded analysis in 1.1% of BVS.In the CoCr-EES arm, non-assessable lesions were more prevalent in segments with 2.5 mm stents compared to 3.0 or 3.5 mm stents (75.0%versus 23.5%, p=0.01), while in the BVS arm image quality was good regardless of the diameter.The in-device minimal lumen diameter by MSCT was smaller than that by QCA with a difference of 0.61 mm in the CoCr-EES arm, vs.only 0.026 mm in the BVS arm. Conclusions:The feasibility of MSCT assessment of BVS-treated lesions was greater than that for lesions with CoCr-EES.