Comparison of treatment outcomes in patients > or =80 years undergoing transradial versus transfemoral coronary intervention.

We assessed the effect of transradial access (vs transfemoral access) for percutaneous coronary intervention on postprocedure length of stay and patient outcomes (in-hospital complications and all-cause and cardiac death at 6 and 12 months) in 225 elderly patients (> or =80 years old). Raw differences between transradial and transfemoral accesses were compared, and 3 forms of propensity score analysis were used to determine the true effect of transradial access. After matching to adjust for baseline differences in patient characteristics, remaining differences in outcomes and postprocedure length of stay were small and not statistically significant at the 95% level, but a decrease in postprocedural length of stay of nearly 1 day was observed and likely was not due to chance. Transradial access in patients > or =80 years old undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention should be preferred due to equivalent success rate and safety and likely reduction in postprocedural hospitalization.