In recent years interventional cardiologists have started to use a new catheter technique, called fractional flow reserve (FFR), in an attempt to assess which blocked vessels might benefit from a stent. Two studies presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Barcelona offered new support for FFR, which has been slowly but surely gaining traction in the interventional cardiology community.
Bernard De Bruyne presented 2-year results from the FAME 2 (Fractional flow reserve versus Angiography for Multivessel Evaluation 2) study (simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine). FAME 2 was designed to find out whether PCI, with the help of FFR, can reduce the rate of hard endpoints in stable coronary artery disease compared to medical therapy. (FAME 2 was sponsored by St. Jude Medical, which makes an FFR pressure wire. Another major player in the field is the Volcano Corporation.)
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