Towards less-invasive monitoring after a heart attack

The BHF FAMOUS-NSTEMI long-term follow-up study

In 2011, the British Heart Foundation funded a study to look at the best way to decide which treatment to give to people who had recently had a heart attack. This showed that measuring the ‘pressure drop’ in a narrowed artery – something called the ‘fractional flow reserve’ or FFR – could be used to decide if a patient needed a stent or bypass surgery to restore blood flow to their heart, or if they could be treated without surgery. This study showed that using FFR measurements to help doctors make decisions about treatments had no negative effect on patient safety up to 12 months after treatment. This new project will follow up on the 350 people who were involved in the study up to 5 years later. Using participants’ NHS records, the team will find out whether people who were not given a stent or bypass surgery based on their measured FRR eventually went on to need this treatment or have a further heart or circulatory event. The study will therefore provide information on long-term effectiveness, safety and cost to the NHS of FFR-based management for heart attack patients. Depending on its results, this technique may go forwards into larger clinical trials, to provide more conclusive evidence whether this should become a standard way of monitoring and treating people after a heart attack.