Endothelial dysfunction and inflammation after percutaneous coronary intervention.

We studied 30 consecutive patients who underwent coronary stenting with respect to postprocedure endothelial dysfunction and levels of pre- and postprocedure cytokines. Patients with severe impairment of flow-mediated dependent dilation, but not flow- mediated independent dilation, had higher concentrations of C-reactive protein before percutaneous coronary intervention (12.9 +/- 20.2 vs 5.6 +/- 13.0 microg/ml, p = 0.04) and 24 hours after stenting (18.8 +/- 20.8 vs 11.8 +/- 20.0 microg/ml, p = 0.05) than patients without severe abnormities of systemic endothelial function. Thus, endothelium-dependent dilation abnormalities were related to the systemic inflammatory state, whereas endothelium-independent dilation abnormalities were not related to the inflammatory status of the patient.