Presenting real-world population data in patients with pulmonary embolism (PE), John Moriarty (University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA) demonstrated results from the STRIKE-PE study at this year’s Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) 2023 annual meeting (9–13 September, Copenhagen, Denmark), which, he stated, provides “valuable insight into functional patient outcomes and quality of life measures”, and displays “significant improvements” in generic and disease-specific patient symptoms.
Foregrounding the study for delegates in attendance, Moriarty made clear note that venous thromboembolism (VTE) is “both incredibly common and rising in prevalence” today, exhibiting a graph which depicts its “substantial financial impact” in Europe—nearly €8.5 billion annually—and presents “a morbidity and mortality that ranks as the third highest among all of the cardiovascular disorders”, he explained.
“These trials have been designed to investigate the real-world applicability of computer-aided mechanical aspiration thrombectomy,” Moriarty relayed to delegates, describing their study design which, to date, includes 55 sites and 600 patients. Their interim, 90-day analysis included 87 patients with a mean age of 59.4 years, 59.8% of patients were male and 94.3% have submassive PE. Moriarty added that inclusion criteria specified that patients have a right/left ventricle (RV/LV) ratio of less than 0.9.
Expanding on their primary and secondary endpoints, Moriarty began by making “important” mention of their finding of zero all-cause mortality at 30-days, which he concluded, is “impressive given the background mortality risk in these patients”. Additionally, he noted two major adverse bleeding events within their interim cohort, however reiterated that there were no mortalities.
Of their interim results, Moriarty highlighted that the observed change in the RV/LV ratio was “statistically significant”, and showed a 0.43 or 27.5% decrease. Investigators also saw a decrease in intraprocedural systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP) of 9.4mmHg or 18%. He stated that these results are “similar or better than most of the investigation device trials done on this patient population previously,” concluding that STRIKE-PE to date has provided “valuable insight” into patient functional outcomes and EQ visual analogue scale (EQ VAS), showing “improvements” in quality-of-life measures.
