Prognostic Implications of Physiologic Investigation After Revascularization With Stent

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is a standard treatment strategy for coronary artery disease (CAD). With the presence of myocardial ischemia, PCI reduces the risks of death, myocardial infarction (MI) and revascularization compared to medical therapy. However, the risk of future clinical events remains high, and about 10% of patients experienced further cardiovascular events after PCI. Several factors are associated with these poor outcomes. Well known patient-related risk factors are diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, left ventricular dysfunction, previous MI, and presentation with the acute coronary syndrome. Procedure-related factors, such as stent underexpension, malapposition, edge dissection, the number of the used stent, and total stent length, are also related to poor prognosis after PCI. Recent studies reported that fractional flow reserve (FFR) after coronary stenting, or post PCI FFR, was associated with future clinical outcomes after PCI, and low post PCI FFR value was associated with procedural factors. However, optimal cut-off values of post-PCI FFR ranged widely, from 0.86 to 0.96, and some study reported the limited prognostic value of post-PCI FFR. This might result from differences in study populations, the definition of outcomes, type of stent used, and distribution of included vessels among previous studies.

To establish the clinical relevance of post-PCI FFR and to evaluate the useful cut-off value of post-PCI FFR in daily practice, investigators planned to incorporate all previous evidence of post-PCI FFR by collaboration with international researchers.