Fractional flow reserve (FFR)-guided drug-eluting stenting reduces death, myocardial infarction or urgent revascularisation, as compared to medical therapy in patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD), according to the results of the FAME 2 trial presented at the European Society of Cardiology’s (ESC) Congress. Whilst percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has been performed for more than 30 years, its benefits in terms of 'hard endpoints' as compared to medical therapy (MT) have never been demonstrated in patients with stable CAD. In patients with stable CAD the rate of death, MI, or urgent revascularisation at two years in those treated with FFR-guided PCI using contemporary drug-eluting stenting was less than half of what it was in patients treated with MT alone, in this study.
In another recent study, these stents were compared to the more traditional bare metal stents. Presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session, the study showed Medtronic's Endeavor zotarolimus-eluting stent is associated with a lower risk of major cardiovascular events at one year compared to bare metal stents among a patient population normally excluded from treatment with drug-eluting stents.
Advances in the design and technology of medical devices and delivery systems, coupled with demand for alternative non-surgical therapies for common medical problems, including heart failure, have led to an increase in the volume, variety and complexity of non-coronary cardiac interventional procedures performed. The greater complexity of these newer procedures, particularly those involving heart valve intervention, necessitates more sophisticated and exacting imaging techniques, both to facilitate appropriate case selection and
to provide procedural guidance, thus increasing the likelihood of successful outcome. Contemporary advances in echocardiography imaging techniques ensure these modalities are well suited to the imaging requirements of this exciting and expanding field of interventional cardiology. Realtime 3D imaging, made possible by the development of a full matrix transducer capable of acquiring pyramidal-shaped ultrasound data sets, has been a major advance in
transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) for examining patients with suspected heart failure.
