Heart Team Debuts Tiniest Device for Detecting Micro-Vessel Disease

St. Luke's University Health Network's interventional cardiology team recently debuted the Abbott PressureWire X, the tiniest device ever made for measuring the health and function of the mini-arteries that supply blood flow to the heart muscle. St. Luke’s is the first and only heart program using this innovative tool.

The Abbot PressureWire X, which is about the thickness of a human hair, is inserted by a cardiologist into a symptomatic, but unblocked coronary artery, and advanced to the far reaches of the vessel to seek defects in the walls and inner lining of the tiny blood vessel that lies downstream of a larger coronary artery.

PressureWire X, which has been used in St. Luke’s cardiac catheterization laboratory since July, measures blood temperature and flow in the minute blood vessels, or micro-vessels. A diseased or damaged artery can cause serious symptoms, including angina (heart pain) and vessel spasms, which also can sometimes mimic a heart attack. Heart attacks are caused when one of the three main, larger coronary arteries supplying blood to the heart muscle becomes narrowed, or completely blocked, by plaque.

A sensor on the wire relays data picked up in the vessel to a computer containing new, specialized CoroFlow software, enabling a cardiologist to diagnose the symptoms’ cause and prescribe a treatment.

“We can insert the PressureWire X far into an artery of a patient who has chest pain but not blockages, in order to look into the ‘micro-vessels’ for what’s causing their symptoms,” said Luis Tejada, MD, interventional cardiologist. He added that “small vessel disease” tends to be more commonly found in women, whose arteries are often smaller. 

According to Kimberly Wilson, DO, interventional cardiologist, “This new device increases our options for diagnosing and treating the network of tiny coronary arteries, which supply about 90% of blood to the heart muscle.”