Comprehensive Angiography-Derived Functional Assessment of Epicardial and Microvascular Coronary Disease. Correlation With Non-invasive Myocardial Stress Imaging

Abstract

Coronary angiography (CA) is poorly correlated with non-invasive myocardial stress imaging (NSI) and myocardial ischemia is often observed in patients with unobstructed coronary arteries. Moreover, the diagnostic performance of combined epicardial and microcirculatory angiography-derived physiological assessment and its correlation with NSI remains unknown. A total of 917 coronary vessels in 319 patients who underwent both CA and NSI were included in this multicenter observational retrospective analysis. Quantitative flow ratio (QFR) and angiography-derived index of microcirculatory resistance (IMR_angio) analyses were performed to estimate coronary epicardial and microcirculatory function respectively. NSI demonstrated evidence of myocardial ischemia in 76% of the cases. IMR_angio (36 [22 to 50] vs 29 [21 to 41], p <0.001) was significantly higher and QFR (0.92 [0.78 to 0.99] vs 0.97 [0.91 to 0.99], p <0.001) was significantly lower in vessels subtending ischemic territories. Overall, the diagnostic accuracy of QFR was moderate (area under the curve of receiver operating characteristic [AUC_ROC] 0.632 [95% confidence interval [CI] 0.589 to 0.674], p <0.0001) but it was higher in patients with normal microcirculatory function (AUC_ROC = 0.726 [95% CI 0.669 to 0.784], p <0.0001, p Value for AUC_ROC comparison = 0.009). Combined QFR/IMR_angio assessment provided incremental diagnostic performance compared with the evaluation of epicardial or microcirculatory districts in isolation (p Value for AUC comparison <0.0001) and it was able to identify the predominant mechanism of myocardial ischemia in 77% of the patients with positive NSI. Our study suggests the value of a combined angiography-derived assessment of epicardial and microvascular function for the definition of the predominant mechanism of myocardial ischemia in patients with suspected coronary artery disease.

Keywords: QFR; SPECT; coronary physiology assessment; index of microcirculatory resistance; myocardial stress imaging; stress-echocardiography.