Coronary CT-based FFR in patients with acute myocardial infarction might predict follow-up invasive FFR: The XPECT-MI study

BackgroundWe aimed to evaluate whether invasive fractional flow reserve (FFRi) of non-infarction related (non-IRA) lesions changes over time in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients. Moreover, we assessed the diagnostic performance of coronary CT angiography-derived FFR(FFR_CT) following the index event in predicting follow-up FFRi.MethodsWe prospectively enrolled 38 STEMI patients (mean age 61.6 ​± ​9 years, 23.1% female) who underwent non-IRA baseline and follow-up FFRi measurements and a baseline FFR_CT (within ≤10 days after STEMI). Follow-up FFRi was performed at 45–60 days (FFRi and FFR_CT value of ≤0.8 was considered positive).ResultsFFRi values showed significant difference between baseline and follow-up (median and interquartile range (IQR) 0.85 0.78–0.92] vs. 0.81 0.73–0.90] p ​= ​0.04, respectively). Median FFR_CT was 0.81 0.68–0.93]. In total, 20 lesions were positive on FFR_CT. A stronger correlation and smaller bias were found between FFR_CT and follow-up FFRi (ρ ​= ​0.86,p ​< ​0.001,bias:0.01) as compared with baseline FFRi (ρ ​= ​0.68, p ​< ​0.001,bias:0.04). Comparing follow-up FFRi and FFR_CT, no false negatives but two false positive cases were found. The overall accuracy was 94.7%, with sensitivity and specificity of 100.0% and 90.0% for identifying lesions ≤0.8 on FFRi. Accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity were 81.5%, 93.3%, and 73.9%, respectively, for identifying significant lesions on baseline FFRi using index FFR_CT.ConclusionFFR_CT in STEMI patients close to the index event could identify hemodynamically relevant non-IRA lesions with higher accuracy than FFRi measured at the index PCI, using follow-up FFRi as the reference standard. Early FFR_CT in STEMI patients might represent a new application for cardiac CT to improve the identification of patients who benefit most from staged non-IRA revascularization.