Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and related interventional cardiology field are rapidly growing in current era. First generation drug eluting stent (DES) needed long-term dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) for preventing future stent thrombosis. But, second generation DES showed better clinical outcomes in terms of target lesion revascularization and stent thrombosis. Later, polymer technology that was used to release drugs gradually improved. BASKET-PROVE II trial compared biodegradable polymer (BP) DES (Nobori, Terumo) with durable polymer DES (Xience Prime, Abbott Vascular) and bare metal stent (ProKinetik, Biotronik) for the safety and efficacy in 2-year follow-up. BP-DES showed 7.6% of event rates in composite endpoint including cardiac death, myocardial infarction (MI), clinically indicated target-vessel revascularization (TVR) which was non-inferior to DP-DES(6.8%) and superior to bare metal stent (12.7%). There were no statistical differences for the event rates of stent thrombosis, MI and cardiac death among three groups in 1-year follow-up. Biodegradable polymer has begun to emerge and suggested the possibility of shortening the duration of DAPT. LEEDERS-FREE trial was designed to confirm the safety and efficacy of polymer-free drug-coated stent (Biofreedom, Biosensors International Technologies, Singapore) compared to bare metal stent (Gazelle stent, Biosensors International Technologies, Singapore) in patients with high bleeding risk. During 390 days, drug coated stent showed significant superiority to bare metal stent for the safety composite endpoint (cardiac death, MI or stent thrombosis) (9.4% vs. 12.9%, P=0.0005). Clinically-driven target-lesion revascularization also showed significant differences between drug-coated stent (5.1%) and bare metal stent (9.8%) (P<0.001). This results provided new therapeutic options that DAPT duration could be shortened to 1 month in patients with high bleeding risk. The rate of cardiovascular events was relatively higher than second generation DES. However, this result should be carefully interpreted because the main purpose of LEADERS-FREE trial is to enroll high bleeding risk patients who are generally excluded in second generation DES studies. Additional studies are needed because there are limited clinical evidences for extending these findings of LEADERS-FREE trial to generalized patients who are eligible to PCI.
LEADERS-FREE trial demonstrated the safety and efficacy of polymer-free drug-coated stent (Biofreedom, Biosensors International Technologies, Singapore) in patients with high bleeding risk. But, there are limited clinical evidences for extending these findings to generalized patients who are eligible to PCI. Therefore, the purpose of this registry is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Biofreedom stent in patients with coronary artery disease.