Ten-year mortality risk of patients undergoing elective PCI: long-term follow-up of the GENetic Determinants of Restenosis (GENDER) study

Excerpt

Although the death rates from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) have declined over the last decades, the burden of disease remains high and CVD remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in Western developed countries [1, 2] including the Netherlands. [3‐6] Tremendous efforts worldwide are put into research and development of novel treatment modalities for CVD to further halt the disease burden, and frequent updates of primary and secondary prevention guidelines should result in the most optimal treatment of each patient with CVD. Besides major improvements in pharmacological treatment with for instance statins, beta-blockers, angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors and antiplatelet agents, interventional treatment modalities such as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) have markedly improved the outcome of patients with coronary artery disease. …