FFR Guidance System Confirms Coronary Stent Necessity

A non-invasive fractional flow reserve (FFR) system delivers multi-vessel physiologic measurements to support functional evaluation of coronary artery disease (CAD).

The CathWorks (Kfar Saba, Israel) FFRangio System provides intra-procedural non-invasive diagnostic technology that aids qualitative analysis of previously acquired angiography data in CAD patients. The software based system is installed on a mobile cart that holds a computer processing unit, a user interface with an LCD screen and keyboard/mouse combo, an isolation transformer, and a network isolator. System operation requires only a mains power connections and a digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) communication port to retrieve X-ray C-arm images.

The system also supports visual output to the Cath Lab main displays, so that the system user interface may be observed on both the system's LCD display and on the Cath Lab's main display (boom monitor). In order to calculate FFRangio, a value derived from simulated blood flow data obtained from coronary angiography images, the user first selects the appropriate images, and following system prompts, marks key features, including target lesion, ostium location, main vessel, target vessel, and its side branches. The system then matches the corresponding vessels among the projections to generate a 3D computer model of the vessels and determine FFRangio.

“Doctors knew that conventional FFR provided valuable objective data, but that came with the cost, risk, and time,” said Professor Ran Kornowski, MD, chairman of cardiology at Rabin Medical Center (Petah Tikva, Israel) and co-inventor of the CathWorks technology. “We believe that we have accomplished our goal of providing doctors with objective data to inform their clinical decision-making without an additional intervention.”

FFR is a physiological index used to determine the hemodynamic severity of atherosclerotic narrowing of the coronary arteries. It specifically identifies which coronary narrowing is responsible for the ischemic obstruction of the flow of blood to a patient’s heart muscle, and helps guide interventional cardiologists in determining which lesions warrant stenting, resulting in improved patient outcomes and reduced health care costs.

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