Novel Approaches to Define Outcomes in Coronary Revascularization

Coronary revascularization is done to alleviate the patient symptoms or to improve prognosis. Despite these clinical indications, significant variability exists in the risk assessment tools used to select patients for coronary revascularization, to the extent of revascularization performed and, in our approaches to define "optimal" revascularization. The goal of this review is to evaluate novel approaches that can assess coronary artery disease before and after revascularization, define the thresholds of these approaches that have been shown to improve morbidity and mortality, and highlight future directions for research in this area. The novel approaches defining coronary revascularization described in this review are split among quality of life metrics, risk scores, noninvasive imaging outcomes, invasive imaging outcomes, and physiological measurements.