Pintea Bentea Georgiana, Awada Ahmad, Berdaoui Brahim
Department of Interventional Cardiology, CHU Brugmann, 1020 Brussels, Belgium.
Biomedicines. 2025 Apr 30;13(5):1086. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines13051086.
The understanding of coronary artery disease is evolving, with more attention given currently to the microcirculation compartment. Coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD) is defined by any structural or functional alteration of the coronary microcirculation, and is prevalent in current clinical practice, being associated with pejorative cardiovascular prognosis. CMD can exist by itself as primary microvascular angina, or in association with a variety of cardiovascular diseases. On the other hand, fractional flow reserve (FFR) represents the gold standard for estimating the hemodynamic impact of moderate coronary artery stenosis, and as such guiding coronary revascularization in clinical practice. The fundamental clinical trials that introduced and validated the use of FFR in current clinical practice were published before acquiring more in-depth knowledge on CMD and the impact it can have on FFR measurements. However, in the setting of CMD, studies have shown that FFR can underestimate the severity of coronary stenosis. In addition, recent findings underline the limitations of FFR to guide revascularization in terms of clinical outcome in specific conditions associated with CMD, such as acute coronary syndrome or multivessel coronary artery disease. As such, new research efforts must be made to investigate the reliability of FFR or to reposition its use in guiding coronary revascularization in the context of CMD, in order to define the clinical value of FFR in this particular setting.
对冠状动脉疾病的认识正在不断发展,目前对微循环部分给予了更多关注。冠状动脉微血管功能障碍(CMD)被定义为冠状动脉微循环的任何结构或功能改变,在当前临床实践中普遍存在,与不良的心血管预后相关。CMD可单独作为原发性微血管性心绞痛存在,或与多种心血管疾病相关。另一方面,血流储备分数(FFR)是评估中度冠状动脉狭窄血流动力学影响的金标准,因此在临床实践中指导冠状动脉血运重建。在对CMD及其对FFR测量可能产生的影响有更深入了解之前,引入并验证FFR在当前临床实践中应用的基础临床试验就已发表。然而,在CMD的情况下,研究表明FFR可能会低估冠状动脉狭窄的严重程度。此外,最近的研究结果强调了FFR在指导血运重建方面的局限性,即在与CMD相关的特定情况下,如急性冠状动脉综合征或多支冠状动脉疾病,其临床结局方面的局限性。因此,必须做出新的研究努力,以研究FFR的可靠性,或在CMD背景下重新定位其在指导冠状动脉血运重建中的应用,以便确定FFR在这一特定情况下的临床价值。