Value of intravascular ultrasound in guiding coronary interventions

There has been great effort to improve clinical outcome in percutaneous treatment for coronary artery disease. Complementary to coronary angiography, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) provides in vivo tomographic anatomic information, enabling to evaluate from the lumen to the vessel wall. As a result, IVUS has had a pivotal role to understand pathophysiology of coronary artery disease and improve clinical outcome. It provides preprocedural information to evaluate stenosis severity and plaque characteristics and helps with optimal stent deployment, minimizing underexpansion and geographic miss that are the major mechanisms of stent failure. Recently, many large-scale clinical trials and meta-analyses with drug-eluting stents have shown the clinical benefits of IVUS-guided percutaneous coronary intervention. Some recent studies have also supported the cost-effectiveness of IVUS-guided PCI especially in high-risk patients. This article will discuss the clinical value of IVUS in contemporary practice.