A novel method for measuring absolute coronary blood flow and microvascular resistance in patients with ischaemic heart disease

Abstract Aims Ischaemic heart disease is the reduction of myocardial blood flow, caused by epicardial and/or microvascular disease. Both are common and prognostically important conditions, with distinct guideline-indicated management. Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is the current gold-standard assessment of epicardial coronary disease but is only a surrogate of flow and only predicts percentage flow changes. It cannot assess absolute (volumetric) flow or microvascular disease. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a novel method that predicts absolute coronary blood flow and microvascular resistance (MVR) in the catheter laboratory. Methods and results A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was used to predict absolute coronary flow (QCFD) and coronary MVR using data from routine invasive angiography and pressure-wire assessment. QCFD was validated in an in vitro flow circuit which incorporated patient-specific, three-dimensional printed coronary arteries; and then in vivo, in patients with coronary disease. In vitro, QCFD agreed closely with the experimental flow over all flow rates [bias +2.08 mL/min; 95% confidence interval (error range) −4.7 to +8.8 mL/min; R2 = 0.999, P