For patients with stable coronary artery disease who have at least one narrowed blood vessel that compromises flow to the heart, medical therapy alone leads to a significantly higher risk of hospitalization and the urgent need for a coronary stent when compared with therapy that also includes initial placement of artery-opening stents. Those are the findings of a study to be published online Aug. 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine that was designed to evaluate the benefits of using a diagnostic tool called fractional flow reserve, or FFR, to help determine the best course of treatment for fixing a narrowed artery.
