Functional Assessment-guided Angioplasty in Patients With Coronary Chronic Total Occlusion (FAGA-CTO)

PCI for CTO has dramatically changed in recent years. Although, with the improvement of devices and refinement of operator techniques, PCI of CTO can currently be performed with high success and low complication rates at experienced centers, the clinical benefit of recanalization of CTO is still a matter of debate. Accumulating evidence suggests that the improvement of left ventricular functional and prognosis is closely related with the area of viable myocardium, which has the potential for contractile recovery after revascularization. For the majority of interventional cardiologists, coronary angiography is the only invasive test deemed necessary for clinical decision-making, despite its weak ability to predict the functional impact of vascular occlusion on the subtended myocardium. To overcome this limitation, adjunctive diagnostic tools for functional evaluation, such as FFR, CFR, IMR and D-SPECT, have been introduced. In non-CTO patients, physiology-guided revascularization strategy has been definitely proven to be better than angiography-guided strategy in pivotal landmark studies. However, the clinical value of these functional parameters for the PCI of CTO is still unknown.

The aim of this study was to determine whether functional evaluation is a better predictor of clinical outcome in patients with CTO undergoing PCI.