Background— Myocardial salvage is often suboptimal after percutaneous coronary intervention in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction. Posthoc subgroup analysis from a previous trial (AMIHOT I) suggested that intracoronary delivery of supersaturated oxygen (SSO₂) may reduce infarct size in patients with large ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction treated early.

Methods and Results— A prospective, multicenter trial was performed in which 301 patients with anterior ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention within 6 hours of symptom onset were randomized to a 90-minute intracoronary SSO₂ infusion in the left anterior descending artery infarct territory (n=222) or control (n=79). The primary efficacy measure was infarct size in the intention-to-treat population (powered for superiority), and the primary safety measure was composite major adverse cardiovascular events at 30 days in the intention-to-treat and per-protocol populations (powered for noninferiority), with Bayesian hierarchical modeling used to allow partial pooling of evidence from AMIHOT I. Among 281 randomized patients with tc-99m-sestamibi single-photon emission computed tomography data in AMIHOT II, median (interquartile range) infarct size was 26.5% (8.5%, 44%) with control compared with 20% (6%, 37%) after SSO₂. The pooled adjusted infarct size was 25% (7%, 42%) with control compared with 18.5% (3.5%, 34.5%) after SSO₂ (P_Wilcoxon=0.02; Bayesian posterior probability of superiority, 96.9%). The Bayesian pooled 30-day mean ( SE) rates of major adverse cardiovascular events were 5.0 1.4% for control and 5.9 1.4% for SSO₂ by intention-to-treat, and 5.1 1.5% for control and 4.7 1.5% for SSO₂ by per-protocol analysis (posterior probability of noninferiority, 99.5% and 99.9%, respectively).

Conclusions— Among patients with anterior ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention within 6 hours of symptom onset, infusion of SSO₂ into the left anterior descending artery infarct territory results in a significant reduction in infarct size with noninferior rates of major adverse cardiovascular events at 30 days.

Clinical Trial Registration— clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00175058