Functional Angioplasty

Coronary angiography underestimates or overestimates lesion severity, but still remains the cornerstone in the decision making for revascularization for an overwhelming majority of interventional cardiologists. Guidelines recommend and endorse non invasive functional evaluation ought to precede revascularization. In real world practice, this is adopted in less than 50% of patients who go on to have some form of revascularization. Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is the ratio of maximal blood flow in a stenotic coronary relative to maximal flow in the same vessel, were it normal. Being independent of changes in heart rate, BP or prior infarction; and take into account the contribution of collateral blood flow. It is a majorly specific index with a reasonably high sensitivity (88%), specificity (100%), positive predictive value (100%), and overall accuracy (93%). Whilst FFR provides objective determination of ischemia and helps select appropriate candidates for revascularization (for both CABG and PCI) in to cath lab itself before intervention, whereas intravascular ultrasound/optical coherence tomography guidance in PCI can secure the procedure by optimizing stent expansion. Functional angioplasty simply is incorporating both intravascular ultrasound and FFR into our daily Intervention practices