Culotte stenting for coronary bifurcation lesions with 2nd and 3rd generation everolimus-eluting stents: the CELTIC Bifurcation Study

Aims The aim of this study was to provide contemporary outcome data for patients with de novo coronary disease and Medina 1,1,1 lesions who were treated with a culotte two-stent technique, and to compare the performance of two modern-generation drug-eluting stent (DES) platforms, the 3-connector XIENCE and the 2-connector SYNERGY. Methods and results Patients with Medina 1,1,1 bifurcation lesions who had disease that was amenable to culotte stenting were randomised 1:1 to treatment with XIENCE or SYNERGY DES. A total of 170 patients were included. Technical success and final kissing balloon inflation occurred in >96% of cases. Major adverse cardiovascular or cerebrovascular events (MACCE: a composite of death, myocardial infarction [MI], cerebrovascular accident [CVA] and target vessel revascularisation [TVR]) occurred in 5.9% of patients by nine months. The primary endpoint was a composite of death, MI, CVA, target vessel failure (TVF), stent thrombosis and binary angiographic restenosis. At nine months, the primary endpoint occurred in 19% of XIENCE patients and 16% of SYNERGY patients (p=0.003 for non-inferiority for platform performance). Conclusions MACCE rates for culotte stenting using contemporary everolimus-eluting DES are low at nine months. The XIENCE and SYNERGY stents demonstrated comparable performance for the primary endpoint.