Cardiovascular software developer HeartFlow highlighted research presented at the 2018 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) conference that confirmed its HeartFlow FFRct Analysis enables physicians to effectively differentiate patients in need of coronary stenting or bypass surgery from those who can be managed with medications alone.
The European Heart Journal published the ADVANCE Registry and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology published results of the experience of Aarhus University Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark.
In these studies, HeartFlow Analysis changed physician management of patients and enabled physicians to determine more efficiently which patients required invasive management and which did not. HeartFlow Analysis identified a set of patients at very low risk of adverse outcomes when undergoing medical therapy and a set whose risk was reduced when undergoing invasive management.
The ADVANCE Registry included more than 5,000 patients in the U.S., Japan, Europe, and Canada. The Aarhus University Hospital experience included more than 3,600 patients in Denmark who were followed for an average of two years.
In the ADVANCE Registry, the added information contained in HeartFlow Analysis led physicians to reconsider and change management plans for two-thirds of their patients. Some patients who were originally scheduled to receive a coronary stent or bypass operation were safely able to avoid the procedure and instead treated with medications alone, while others who would have received medications were redirected to stenting or bypass surgery.
In the Aarhus University Hospital experience, physicians differentiated higher-risk patients who required additional testing, stenting, or bypass surgery from patients whose treatment required only medications. Patients with a positive fractional flow reserve (FFRct) value who received medical therapy alone experienced heart attacks at a rate six times higher than that seen among patients who received a stent or underwent bypass surgery.
In the ADVANCE study, patients with positive FFRct values had a 20-fold higher risk compared with those with negative FFRct values.
