Assessment of coronary angioplasty: comparison of visual assessment, hand-held caliper measurement and automated digital quantitation.

Digital subtraction coronary angiograms (DSA) of 27 patients who had undergone coronary angioplasty (PTCA) to a total of 32 lesions were analyzed using an automated border-detecting computer program and hand-held caliper measurement of diameter percent stenosis. The results were compared with visual interpretation of the 35-mm cineangiograms. Visual reports significantly overestimated the pre-PTCA diameter percent stenosis (P less than .001) and underestimated the residual post-PTCA narrowing compared with the automatic computer program (P less than .001). Caliper measurements overestimated significantly the pre-PTCA stenosis in comparison with the computer (P less than .01), but post-PTCA the two methods did not differ significantly (P = .105). There was a positive but poor correlation between caliper and computer measurements (r = .43, P less than .05) performed on the pre-PTCA digital angiograms. Post-PTCA the two methods correlated better (r = 0.78, P less than .001), but further statistical analysis showed important discrepancies between them. The correlation of visual reports and computer measurements was poor pre-PTCA (Kendall's tau = 0.32, P less than .05) and not statistically significant post-PTCA (tau = 0.64, P = .5). We conclude that there is observer bias in the visual reporting of angioplasty results, so that pre-PTCA lesions are overestimated, whereas post-PTCA are underestimated. Hand-held caliper measurement improves the assessment of coronary stenoses in comparison with the visual report but still may not altogether eliminate observer bias; it may overestimate the pre-PTCA stenoses compared with automated border detection.