Fig 1.
Structure of our ischemic heart disease (IHD) referral system.
We established a cooperative form for circulation between general practitioners and cardiologists in our hospital. Follow-up angiography was generally performed 6–12 months after PCI. When the patients were registered in the referral system, general practitioners were required to follow up with the patients at least once a year, even in the absence of an event. IHD, ischemic heart disease.
Fig 2.
Form of conventional follow-up.
In conventional follow-up, cardiologists or general practitioners continued to treat the patients with medications, and the patients were referred as needed at the discretion of the attending doctors.
Table 1.
Baseline patient characteristics.
Table 2.
Clinical events during follow-up.
Table 3.
Predictors of net clinical benefits.
Fig 3.
Kaplan–Meier analysis of net adverse clinical events (NACE) with or without use of our unique referral system.
The red line represents the referral system group and the black line represents the conventional follow-up group. There is a significant net clinical benefit for the unique referral system group (p<0.001; log-rank test).
Table 4.
Baseline characteristics (matched pair analysis).
Table 5.
Predictors of net clinical benefits after matched pair analysis.
Fig 4.
Kaplan–Meier analysis of net adverse clinical events (NACE) with or without use of our unique referral system (matched pair analysis).
The red line represents the referral system group and the black line represents the conventional follow-up group. There is a significant net clinical benefit for the unique referral system group (p = 0.007; log-rank test).