LONDON – A potential revolution may be underway in how patients with stable, new-onset chest pain are selected for invasive cardiac catheterization.
Fractional flow reserve–computed tomography (FFR-CT) utilized sophisticated computer software to noninvasively assess both coronary anatomy and function in symptomatic, intermediate-risk patients in the randomized PLATFORM trial. It proved a safe alternative to conventional invasive diagnostic cardiac catheterization in the 584-patient, 11-center study, Dr. Pamela S. Douglas said in an interview during the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
Using FFR-CT safely resulted in cancellation of 61% of planned diagnostic catheterizations on the basis of finding no obstructive CAD lesions, explained Dr. Douglas of Duke University, Durham, N.C.
The big remaining question now concerns the cost-effectiveness of the HeartFlow FFR-CT method, now commercially available in both the United States and Europe. Those embargoed data will be presented by Dr. Mark A. Hlatky of Stanford (Calif.) University at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference in San Francisco in October.