Comparison of outcomes in patients with insulin-dependent versus non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus receiving drug-eluting stents (from the first phase of the prospective multicenter German DES.DE registry).

Drug-eluting stents have been effective in randomized controlled trials, but their safety and efficacy in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes has not been well studied. Baseline clinical and angiographic characteristics and in-hospital and follow-up events were recorded for enrolled patients. From October 2005 and October 2006, 581 patients with insulin-dependent diabetes and 1,078 with non-insulin-dependent diabetes treated with sirolimus- and paclitaxel-eluting stents were enrolled at 98 sites. The composite of death, myocardial infarction, and stroke, defined as major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events, as well as target vessel revascularization was used as the primary end point. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to adjust for confounding parameters. Baseline clinical characteristics were more severe in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes, whereas descriptive characteristics were not unique. At 1-year follow-up, the comparison between the 2 groups revealed significantly higher rates of overall death (7.4% vs 4.6%, p <0.05), target vessel revascularization (15.1% vs 10.4%, p <0.05), and overall stent thrombosis (6.5% vs 4.1%, p <0.05) for insulin-dependent patients, while rates of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events were not significantly different (12.8% vs 9.9%, p = 0.09). These results persisted even after risk adjustment for heterogenous baseline characteristics of the 2 groups. In conclusion, the data generated from the German Drug-Eluting Stent (DES.DE) registry revealed that even with drug-eluting stents, the annual risk for death, target vessel revascularization, and thrombotic events remains higher in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes compared to those with non-insulin-dependent diabetes.