New devices for percutaneous coronary intervention are rapidly making bypass surgery obsolete.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review summarizes recent and cumulative progress in the success, safety, applicability, and durability of percutaneous coronary intervention. RECENT FINDINGS: Improvements in basic percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) equipment and the availability of bare metal stents in the mid-1990s improved acute procedural success to 98%, reduced the emergency surgery rate to 0.2%, and reduced the incidence of recurrent symptoms due to restenosis at the treated site to 15 to 20%. The recent availability of drug-eluting stents has reduced the in-stent neointimal proliferation that causes restenosis and reduced the incidence of symptomatic recurrence to less than 5%, rivaling that of bypass surgery. The work on better antithrombotic pharmacology, distal embolic protection, and devices for crossing chronic total occlusions will further add to the armamentarium for catheter-based revascularization. SUMMARY: Based on progress over the past decade, PCI has grown to represent about two-thirds of all coronary revascularization (800,000 PCI vs 350,000 bypass surgeries). Recent and ongoing progress will make bypass surgery largely obsolete within the next several years.