Coronary Blood Flow Measurement in Conventional Coronary Angiograms by a New Method Based on Contrast Density Detection. A Physiological Insight

Abstract Background TIMI flow grade and corrected TIMI frame count (CTFC) are widely used methods to evaluate angiographic coronary blood flow. Measurement of coronary blood flow (CBF) on standard coronary angiography (CAG) has aroused great interest recently, trying to combine the CTFC concept with new methods for post-angioplasty and for cardiac syndrome X assessment. Additionally, coronary slow flow it is now considered a major criterion for microvascular angina. Objective Explore a new approach of quantitative angiographic measurement of CBF based on densitometric contrast detection in CAG off-line, using an accessible software to obtain a more precise and reliable CBF assessment. Methods Thirty patients were studied and divided in 2 groups, normal coronary blood flow (NF) and slow coronary blood flow (SF), according to CTFC definition. The DM was applied to the study sample to differentiate between NF and SF. Non-parametric statistics was used to assess differences between groups at p