Coronary obstructive lesions: assessing their physiological significance in humans

For more than two decades cardiologists and cardiac surgeons have estimated the physiologic significance of coronary lesions by measuring percent stenosis of the obstructive vascular segment from coronary angiograms. Such measurements, when performed without computer-based analysis, are associated with substantial variability between observers, as well as within a single observer. In addition, recent intraoperative measurements of coronary reserve in individual obstructed vessels of patients with multivessel coronary disease performed with a suction Doppler probe indicate that, in the intermediate range (10% to 90% diameter stenosis), percent stenosis measurements of coronary lesions by angiography correlates poorly with coronary reserve. These studies suggest that the physiologic significance of coronary obstructions cannot be accurately assessed by visual interpretation of coronary angiograms. More sophisticated and accurate approaches are needed for assessing the physiologic significance of coronary obstructions preoperatively.