Five-year outcomes for patients with left main coronary artery disease having coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) or a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) are similar as long as their disease is not anatomically complex, a study suggests.

More than 1900 patients from centres across Europe and the US with left main coronary arterial disease of low or intermediate complexity were included in the trial, known as EXCEL, and randomly allocated to either PCI with an everolimus-eluting stent or CABG.

Three-year outcomes had been reported previously, showing that PCI was non-inferior to CABG.

At five years, 22% of patients randomly assigned to stenting had experienced MI, stroke or death from any cause, compared with 19.2% of those who received CABG — a difference that was not statistically significant.