Clinical Value of the Quantitative Flow Ratio to Predict Long-term Target Vessel Failure in Patients with In-stent Restenosis after Drug-coated Balloon Angioplasty.

Objective: The study sought to investigate the clinical predictive value of quantitative flow ratio (QFR) for the long-term target vessel failure (TVF) outcome in patients with in-stent restenosis (ISR) by using drug-coated balloon (DCB) treatment after a long-term follow-up.

Methods: This was a retrospective study. A total of 186 patients who underwent DCB angioplasty for ISR in two hospitals from March 2014 to September 2019 were enrolled. The QFR of the entire target vessel was measured offline. The primary endpoint was TVF, including target vessel-cardiac death (TV-CD), target vessel-myocardial infarction (TV-MI), and clinically driven-target vessel revascularization (CD-TVR).

Results: The follow-up time was 3.09±1.53 years, and 50 patients had TVF. The QFR immediately after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) was significantly lower in the TVF group than in the no-TVF group. Multivariable Cox regression analysis indicated that the QFR immediately after PCI was an excellent predictor for TVF after the long-term follow-up [hazard ratio (HR): 5.15×10^-5 (6.13×10^-8-0.043); P<0.01]. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis demonstrated that the optimal cut-off value of the QFR immediately after PCI for predicting the long-term TVF was 0.925 (area under the curve: 0.886, 95% confidence interval: 0.834-0.938; sensitivity: 83.40%, specificity: 88.00; P<0.01). In addition, QFR≤0.925 post-PCI was strongly correlated with the TVF, including TV-MI and CD-TVR (P<0.01).

Conclusion: The QFR immediately after PCI showed a high predictive value of TVF after a long-term follow-up in ISR patients who underwent DCB angioplasty. A lower QFR immediately after PCI was associated with a worse TVF outcome.