Role of FFR in ACS Patients: Pressure ACS Registry

Currently, fractional flow reserve (FFR) is regarded as a gold-standard invasive method to define lesion-specific ischemia and FFR-guided PCI has been proven to reduce unnecessary revascularization and to enhance patient's clinical outcomes. Therefore, current guidelines recommend FFR measurement for intermediate coronary stenosis when there is no definite evidence of lesion-specific ischemia. However, previous evidences which well demonstrated the benefit of FFR-guided strategy were mostly generated from patients with stable coronary artery disease.4 FFR may be overestimated and the hemodynamic relevance of a coronary stenosis underestimated in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS).Its role in ACS patients still needs to be defined although several studies have recently published addressing the value of FFR-guided PCI in ACS. In fact, recent evidence suggests that culprit lesions of patients presenting with a non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction that were deferred based on a "negative" FFR have a relatively high event rate, calling into question the use of FFR in that patient population.