Journal of cardiovascular computed tomography
-
J Cardiovasc Comput Tomogr · Sep 2011
Multicenter Study Clinical TrialRationale and design of the DeFACTO (Determination of Fractional Flow Reserve by Anatomic Computed Tomographic AngiOgraphy) study.
Coronary computed tomographic angiography (CTA) allows for noninvasive identification of anatomic coronary artery disease (CAD) severity but does not discriminate whether a stenosis causes ischemia. Computational fluid dynamic techniques applied to CTA images now permit noninvasive computation of fractional flow reserve (FFR), a measure of lesion-specific ischemia, but the diagnostic performance of computed FFR (FFR(CT)) as compared with measured FFR at the time of invasive coronary angiography remains unexplored. ⋯ The DeFACTO study will determine whether the addition of FFR(CT) to conventional CTA improves the diagnosis of hemodynamically significant CAD.