You Want to Stent ... Do Intravascular Ultrasound!

Most invasive cardiologists are familiar with the common catheterization lab joke that if you want to justify placing a stent, use intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) to assess the lesion and that if you prefer medical therapy, use fractional flow reserve (FFR) to assess the lesion. Nam et al. (1) has nicely provided a study that documents the validity of this statement. In their retrospective study involving the use of either FFR or IVUS for intermediate lesion assessment, the rate of stenting was 3 times higher in the IVUS assessed