Abstract
The potential benefit of revascularization depends on the presence and extent of myocardial ischemia. Performing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) on ischemia-inducing coronary stenoses improves both symptoms and outcome, while performing PCI on non-ischemia-inducing stenoses has no benefit and is potentially harmful. Noninvasive testing and the coronary angiogram have limited ability to distinguish specific ischemic territories and responsible stenoses, especially in multivessel coronary disease. To overcome these shortcomings, fractional flow reserve (FFR) has been developed as a stenosis-specific index to determine whether a coronary stenosis has ischemic potential. FFR-guided PCI improves both symptoms and outcome. As such, knowledge of coronary physiology and FFR has become imperative in daily coronary decision making.
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Zimmermann, F., Pijls, N., Tonino, W. (2018). Fractional Flow Reserve. In: Lanzer, P. (eds) Textbook of Catheter-Based Cardiovascular Interventions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55994-0_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55994-0_18
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