Natural History of Coronary Atherosclerosis

The present study sought to explore the predictive value of radial wall strain (RWS, derived solely from angiograms) for coronary artery lesion progression compared with lesion vulnerability assessed by optical coherence tomography (OCT). The lesion progression at 1 year was defined as an increase of ≥20% in diameter stenosis based on quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) evaluation.

The recently developed angiography-derived maximum RWS (RWSmax) was computed as the maximum deformation of lumen diameter throughout the cardiac cycle, expressed as a percentage of the largest lumen diameter. This approach offers a quantitative assessment of the biomechanical attributes of coronary lesions. Consequently, it allows for the identification of lesion vulnerability, potentially compensating for the limitations of intravascular imaging in assessing lesion stability and optimizing strategies for identifying high-risk vulnerable plaques in patients. In the present multicenter, prospective cohort of individuals with acute myocardial infarction, we assessed the predictive significance of identifying vulnerable lesions using an RWSmax threshold of ≥13%. The investigation aimed to determine the capacity of these identified lesions to predict the progression of the disease at 1 year. Furthermore, the study validated that predictive capacity of RWSmax was on par with, and not inferior to, lesion vulnerability assessed by OCT in tracking lesion progression.