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  • Image-Guided PCI – Is “Perfect” Still the Enemy of “Good”?

    In the early days of coronary interventions (I still remember those early days), Richard Myler used to show a cartoon slide of a sculptor chiseling a statue. As the final blow was struck to the almost completed masterpiece, the whole thing shattered. The caption under the cartoon, “Just one more tap,” was meant to convey to the aspiring interventionalists that perhaps you should stay with a “good” angioplasty result rather than try to make it “perfect.” Coronary dissection and acute vessel closure were the dreaded complications that could turn a reasonable outcome into a disaster. As stenting has become ubiquitous, this concern has abated but not disappeared. Now the question is, “How much perfection is warranted, and how do we achieve it?” There is general agreement that the angiographic appearance of the artery after stenting is an inadequate measure and that intravascular imaging gives a more accurate picture. But is “seeing is believing” (and therefore acting) the right way to go, or is seeing and acting only tampering with a good or adequate result?

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