Tirofiban use with clopidogrel and aspirin decreases adverse cardiovascular events after percutaneous coronary intervention for ST-elevation myocardial infarction: a meta-analysis of randomized trials.

Current guidelines deemed usefulness of routine early glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor (GPI) administration in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) before primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with dual antiplatelet therapy as uncertain. We aimed to examine the current evidence for the use of tirofiban, a nonpeptide glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitor, in STEMI patients treated with dual antiplatelet therapy. We performed systematic searches of MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CENTRAL databases for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of tirofiban use in STEMI patients treated with aspirin and clopidogrel which reported clinical and/or angiographic outcomes after primary PCI. Data were combined using random effect and fixed effect models for heterogeneous and homogeneous outcomes respectively using Review Manager 5 (The Nordic Cochrane Centre, The Cochrane Collaboration, 2008). Six randomized controlled trials were eligible for the inclusion; involving 708 patients in tirofiban group and 721 control subjects. Routine tirofiban use decreased the major adverse cardiovascular events (odds ratio [OR] 0.50; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.26-0.94). Corrected thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) frame count was also reduced with tirofiban (mean difference -8.48 [95% CI, -12.62 to -4.34]). There were no significant differences in the rates of postprocedure TIMI flow grade 3 and TIMI myocardial perfusion/blush grade 3, major bleeding by TIMI criteria, or mortality in the 2 groups. Current analysis of available studies suggests that routine and early tirofiban use before primary PCI may decrease the major cardiovascular events in STEMI patients treated with aspirin and clopidogrel without any significant increase in major bleeding. An adequately powered randomized trial is urgently needed to confirm the above findings and estimate the effect size.