“These results confirm what I already think is safe,” she said. “I’m comfortable going within 48 hours. But we individualize our approach, so it was helpful that the study investigators included platelet reactivity data. The interesting thing for me in this study was the number of adverse events in patients who waited longer.”
Dr. Chikwe said her top-line message was that “Surgery looked incredibly safe; there was amazingly low mortality. And if a patient has an indication for surgery, waiting does not serve you well.”
However, she also cautioned that the trial was somewhat underpowered, with a small number of events that drove the primary outcome, leading to some uncertainty on the results.
“The RAPID trial was helpful, and although it confirms my practice, I think physicians may want to see a larger-powered trial to be convincingly compelled that they should change their practice,” Dr. Chikwe noted.
She added that clinical trials in cardiac surgery are driven by inherent challenges. “Cardiac surgery is not very common, and it is hard to recruit patients into these trials, so you are generally tied to a small number of patients, and you therefore have to be extremely thoughtful about the study design. It is almost a given that you will need to use surrogate endpoints, and the choice of the surrogate endpoint can determine which way the trial goes.”
The RAPID CABG study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. So reports research support, consultancy, or speaker’s fees from AggreDyne, Roche Diagnostics, Fujimori Kogyo, and AstraZeneca Canada. Dr. Mehran reports that her institution has received significant trial funding from AstraZeneca (the manufacturer of ticagrelor).
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.