July 2, 2026
Read the editorial, "Physiological Assessment of Coronary Artery Disease," published in the New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1056/NEJMe2602134
The New England Journal of Medicine has published an editorial by Amanda Randles, PhD, titled "Physiological Assessment of Coronary Artery Disease," accompanying two clinical trials evaluating computationally enabled, angiography-derived physiological assessment for patients with coronary artery disease.
The editorial reviews the evolution of physiological assessment for coronary artery disease, from invasive pressure wire-based techniques such as fractional flow reserve (FFR) and instantaneous wave-free ratio (iFR) to emerging angiography-derived approaches that combine routine coronary angiography with computational methods to estimate lesion physiology. These advances have the potential to simplify physiological assessment while expanding access to physiology-guided clinical decision-making.
The accompanying randomized clinical trials evaluate whether angiography-derived physiological assessment can provide clinical outcomes comparable to established invasive physiological assessment strategies. Together, the studies highlight the growing role of computational methods in cardiovascular medicine and demonstrate how advances in computational science, biomedical engineering, and clinical cardiology are converging to enable more accessible, physiology-guided care for patients with coronary artery disease.