During the past decade, clinicians and researchers alike have increasingly relied on an imaging technique called intravascular ultrasound to detect and examine abnormalities in blood vessels. An absence of standards threatens the technique's continued usefulness, however.
Clinicians lack a common language to share their findings.
And researchers have been troubled by ambiguous terminology and proliferating synonyms for similar structures and measurements. Solving those problems is the goal of a new clinical expert consensus document that will be published in the April 2001 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology . The document was endorsed by the ESC and the Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions. Intravascular ultrasound is performed during a cardiac catheterization and provides a three-dimensional perspective of the internal structure of the coronary arteries. Aimed at practitioners, payers, and other interested parties, the document summarizes the ACC's opinion of this evolving area of practice.