Ninety studies (25,094 participants) were included. Eleven studies (1,018 participants) assessed AngioJet treatment, of these two were treatment groups from RCTs and nine were from non-RCTs. One hundred and twenty four treatment groups from 81 RCTs (24,076 participants) assessed percutaneous coronary interventions.
There was no difference between AngioJet and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for post procedural thrombolysis in myocardial infarction 3 flow (median flow rate 91.5% with AngioJet, 90.6% with PCI; OR 1.12, 95% CI 0.70 to 2.27); short term mortality (median rate 3.5% with AngioJet, 3.5% with PCI; OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.53 to 1.50), short-term major cardiovascular event (median rate 6.9% with AngioJet, 5.6% with PCI; OR 1.25, 95% CI 0.54 to 2.40).
Subgroup analyses showed similar results for the type of percutaneous coronary intervention (primary, facilitated, rescue and thrombus rich) and symptom duration.
Sensitivity analyses comparing different prior distributions led to similar results. The hierarchical model showed that for short term mortality there were no differences in results from RCTs and non-RCTs.
Funnel plots showed no evidence of publication bias.