Response to Letter Regarding Article, “Intracoronary Compared With Intravenous Bolus Abciximab Application in Patients With ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction Undergoing Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention”

We agree with Abdellaoui et al that the area at risk may explain up to 50 % of infarct size, as this has been shown in experimental trials. In our randomized trial of intracoronary versus intravenous abcix-imab bolus administration, we did not assess the area at risk, which might be a limitation.1 However, because this was a randomized trial, differences in area at risk are extremely unlikely given that all other baseline characteristics were well balanced between the 2 random-ized groups. Furthermore, the sum of ST-segment elevation at baseline (before percutaneous coronary intervention) and the number of elevated leads were similar between the treatment groups, which indicates the same area at risk. ST-segment evaluation might have a similar value for assessment of the area at risk as the somewhat more inaccurate left ventricular angiography.2,3 As stated in our discus-sion, magnetic resonance is now able to assess the area at risk retrospectively from T2-weighted images (edema imaging).4 W