Objectives: The multicenter, single-arm BEACH (Boston Scientific EPI: A Carotid Stenting Trial for High-Risk Surgical Patients) evaluated outcomes in high-surgical-risk patients with carotid artery stenosis treated with the Carotid WALLSTENT plus FilterWire EX/EZ Emboli Protection System (Boston Scientific, Natick, Massachusetts).
Background: Carotid artery stent (CAS) placement offers a less invasive alternative for high-risk surgical carotid endarterectomy (CEA) patients.
Methods: The trial enrolled 480 pivotal patients who were candidates for carotid revascularization but considered high surgical risk due to pre-specified anatomic criteria and/or medical comorbidities. The primary end point (all stroke, death, or Q-wave myocardial infarction [MI] through 30 days; non-Q-wave MI through 24 h; and ipsilateral stroke or neurologic death through 1 year) was compared with a proportionally weighted objective performance criterion (OPC) of 12.6% for published surgical endarterectomy results in similar patients, plus a pre-specified noninferiority margin of 4%.
Results: Among pivotal patients, 41.2% were at high surgical risk due to comorbid risk factors, and 58.8% due to anatomic risk factors; 76.7% were asymptomatic with flow-limiting carotid stenosis >80%. At 1 year, the composite primary end point occurred in 8.9% (40 of 447), with a repeat revascularization rate of 4.7%. With an upper 95% confidence limit of 11.5% for the primary composite end point, the BEACH trial results met the pre-specified criteria for noninferiority relative to the calculated OPC plus noninferiority margin (16.6%) for historical surgical CEA outcomes in similar patients (p < 0.0001 for noninferiority).
Conclusions: The BEACH trial results demonstrate that CAS with the WALLSTENT plus FilterWire embolic protection is non-inferior (equivalent or better than) to CEA at 1-year in high-surgical-risk patients.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00316108.