Does FFR_CT have proven utility as a gatekeeper prior to invasive angiography?

Excerpt

For decades, invasive coronary angiography (ICA) in the catheterization lab has remained the gold standard for evaluation of symptoms of possible coronary artery disease (CAD). However, because catheter angiography is expensive, uncomfortable, and associated with a small, but nonzero, incidence of major complications, indirect means of evaluating CAD have been sought. Physiologic methods of evaluating CAD began with simple exercise stress testing and later added stress nuclear imaging, stress echocardiography, and even stress MRI, all of which have evolved and improved in spatial resolution and diagnostic accuracy with progressive technological advances.1 More recently, noninvasive coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) has become technically feasible since the 1990s using ECG-gated coronary computed tomography. With the arrival of 64 multi-detector and even more advanced CT scanners, utilization of coronary CTA has increased exponentially in a relatively short time frame.2 …