Ultrasound Guidance during Percutaneous Coronary Intervention; Routine versus Selective

Refer to the page 303-308 Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is an invasive imaging tool de-signed to find the maximum of efficiency with the minimum of la-bor. It provides important procedural information before and after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The lumen, the arterial wall, and the atherosclerotic process within the vessel can be of extensive use. Expert consensus documents prepared by the Ameri-can College of Cardiology and the European Society of Cardiology have set the standards for the methodology and terminology used in IVUS imaging.1)2) Recently, optical coherent tomography, a light-based imaging technique, has entered the clinical arena. However, there is little doubt that IVUS continues to play a major role in stu-dies on coronary atherosclerosis and the procedural guidance of coronary intervention. The importance of IVUS was emphasized again during the drug-eluting stent (DES) era. IVUS is useful in assessing lesion length, severity, and plaque morphology before stent implantation, and to optimize the PCI results such as stent expansion, stent apposition, and lesion coverage; as well as for treating possible complications after stent implantation. The stent underexpansion and residual disease of the reference segment were predictive of stent throm-bosis, which can be devastating. It is often underexpanded in th