Earlier studies suggest that administering statins prior to percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) is associated with lower risk of periprocedural myocardial infarction and contrast-induced nephropathy. Current American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines recommend routine use of statins prior to PCI. It is unclear how commonly this recommendation is followed in clinical practice and what its effect on outcomes is.

We evaluated the incidence and in-hospital outcomes associated with statin pretreatment among patients undergoing PCI and enrolled in the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium PCI registry at 44 hospitals in Michigan between January 2010 and December 2012. Propensity and exact matching were used to adjust for the nonrandom use of statins prior to PCI. Long-term mortality was assessed in a subset of patients who were linked to Medicare data.

Our study population was comprised of 80,493 patients of whom 26,547 (33 %) did not receive statins prior to undergoing PCI. When compared to statin receivers, nonreceivers had lower rates of prior cardiovascular disease. In the matched analysis, absence of statin use prior to PCI was associated with a similar rate of in-hospital mortality (0.43% vs 0.42%, odds ratio 1.00, 95% CI 0.70-1.42, P = .98) and periprocedural myocardial infarction (2.34% vs 2.10%, odds ratio 1.13, 95% CI 0.97-1.32, P = .11) compared to statin receivers. Likewise, no difference in the rate of coronary artery bypass grafting, cerebrovascular accident (CVA), or contrast-induced nephropathy was observed. There was no association between pre-PCI use of statins and long-term survival among the subset of included Medicare patients (hazard ratio = 1.0, P = .96).

A significant number of patients undergo PCI without statin pretreatment, but this is not associated with in-hospital major complications or long-term mortality.