Effects of a percutaneous coronary intervention or conservative treatment strategy on treatment outcomes in elderly female patients with acute coronary syndrome

Aim. To determine the difference in hospi-tal outcomes between percutaneous coro-nary intervention (PCI) and conservative treatment of elderly female patients hos-pitalized for acute coronary syndrome (ACS).Material and Methods. This controlled study included 123 female patients admit-ted to the Clinic for heart and cardiovas-cular diseases University Hospital of Split with a diagnosis of ACS and multiple car-diovascular risk factors. We recorded their habits, history, demographics, presenting symptoms, electrocardiograms, ultra-sound results, laboratory tests, diagnostic tests and treatment. We compared these data between the two groups, i.e., those treated with conservative therapy and those treated with PCI.Results. There were fewer arrhythmias (P<0.001) and episodes of heart failure (P<0.001) during hospitalization in the PCI group than in the conservative ther-apy group. There was no significant differ-ence in complications between the groups (P=0.887).Conclusion. Elderly female patients with ACS treated with PCI had less arrhythmias and heart failure during hospitalization than those treated with conservative ther-apy and there was no difference in com-plications. These results suggest that even high risk patients have better outcomes af-ter treatment with PCI, and therefore PCI is suggested as first-line treatment in these patients, regardless of risk factors.