MASS COMM: Elective angioplasty can be performed in hospital with or without emergency surgical support.

Increasingly, the frequent performances of elective angioplasties are in hospitals that do not have a cardiac surgery team. The occurrence for the need of emergency surgery varies from 0.1 to 0.4% in the contemporary age. There is an ongoing debate on health policy about whether to perform elective coronary angioplasty at hospitals without cardiac surgery support. 

The main objective of MASS COMM was to compare safety and long-term outcomes among community hospitals with cardiac surgery and hospitals without cardiac surgery support in patients with ischemic heart disease treated with elective percutaneous coronary intervention. MASS COMM was a prospective, multicenter, randomized trial that found no differences in thirty day elective angioplasties performed in hospitals, with or without the support of cardiac surgery. Patients did not show different rates (MACE). Up to twelve months follow-up there was no difference in all-cause mortality, repeat revascularization or stroke

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Original title: A Randomized Trial to Compare Percutaneous Coronary Intervention between Massachusetts Hospitals With Cardiac Surgery On-Site and Community Hospitals Without Cardiac Surgery On-Site ( MASS COMM ).