Computed Tomography (CTCA) assessment of coronary stenoses might not correlate very well with measurements of FFR ischemia.

A recent study suggests that Computed Tomography (CTCA) assessment of coronary stenoses might not correlate very well with measurements of FFR ischemia.

MedWire in a recent article has reported that anatomical assessments of coronary stenoses especially its severity using CTCA (Computed Tomography) or even the conventional coronary angiography (CCA) does not correlate very well with measurements of ischemia by intracoronary fractional flow reserve (FFR), According to a study which was published in the “Journal of the American College of Cardiology”.

Researchers had measured the ability of both the techniques CTCA and CCA, by visual as well as quantitative assessment. This was done with close to 79 patients with stable angina to determine their hemodynamic significance of coronary lesions. While 39 of the 79 coronary stenoses that were analyzed were deemed anatomically significant but only 16 were hemodynamically significant, this significance is indicated by a FFR below 0.75. The researchers also found that the quantitative analysis of stenoses using the quantitative methods CTCA and CCA improved the prediction of relevant stenosis only slightly, but the agreement of the measurements with FFR was only fair for both."