Coronary Artery Disease Clinical Trials

Early detection of coronary atherosclerotic disease facilitates adequate prevention. The purpose of this study is to compare an assessment of coronary atherosclerotic disease burden by positron emission tomography / computed tomography (NaF-PET/CT) with those of conventional and ultra-high-resolution-CT (UHR-CT) in patients with suspected coronary artery disease. For this purpose, the investigators plan to include 33 patients with symptoms concerning for CAD who have been referred for cardiac CT testing. Read Less

The purpose of this study is to determine if ultrasound-guided bilateral pectointercostal fascial plane blocks with bilateral rectus sheath blocks block decrease pain scores, decrease opioid consumption, improve respiratory function, and improve quality of recovery in patients recovering from elective cardiac surgery involving primary median sternotomy and mediastinal chest tubes in comparison to pectointercostal fascial plane blocks alone. Read Less

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in Veterans. Inflammation in the arteries of the heart may increase the risk of cardiac death. Patients with heart disease undergoing major surgery are at increased risk of complications after surgery, including heart attack, stroke, and death. The proposed research seeks to better understand the role of inflammation in the damage to the heart and blood vessels after major surgery. This research also seeks to identify the potential beneficial role of a safe medication, colchicine, which has direct effects on inflammatory cells and has been used in the treatment of inflammatory diseases for more than 2000 years, on reducing the rate of complications after surgery. With its quick onset of action and excellent safety profile, colchicine may have the potential to reduce risk of heart injury, stroke, or death after major surgery. Read Less

Two strategies have both proven to be effective in reducing bleeding complications while preserving efficacy compared with maintaining long-term DAPT with aspirin and a potent P2Y12 inhibitor: a) DAPT de-escalation (i.e., switching from prasugrel or ticagrelor to clopidogrel while maintaining aspirin) and b) potent P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy (i.e., maintaining prasugrel or ticagrelor and dropping aspirin). These strategies have been tested in a number of trials and have led to changes in practice guidelines to consider either one of these strategies as bleeding reduction approaches among ACS patients undergoing PCI. However, comparative assessments between DAPT de-escalation and potent P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy are lacking. Read Less

In this study, quantitative characterization of plaque using coronary computed tomographic angiography (CTA) will be used to determine if women who were treated with intensive medical therapy have a greater reduction in the amount and type of cholesterol plaque compared to women receiving usual care and if this results in beneficial changes in clinical symptoms. The study will provide an understanding of how intensive medical therapy works in providing clinical benefit in women with nonobstructive plaque. Read Less

Cardiac catheterization with invasive coronary angiography is the gold standard for determining the presence or absence of significant coronary heart disease (CHD). However, cardiac catheterization is costly and, as an invasive procedure, it is associated with some risk of adverse events, rarely even stroke, myocardial infarction, or death. Recent advances in multi-detector computed tomography angiography (CTA) have allowed rapid, noninvasive coronary artery imaging in patients with suspected CHD. CTA generally yields high accuracy for identifying patients with CHD when compared to cardiac catheterization. However, diagnostic accuracy is reduced in the setting of severe coronary artery calcification and coronary stents due to its inferior spatial resolution compared to cardiac catheterization. Because high-risk patients often have severe coronary calcification or stents, the application of CTA has been particularly limited in this important patient group. Recently, an ultrahigh-resolution CT scanner was released which has shown promise to overcome the limitation of conventional CTA in the setting of severe coronary artery calcification or stents. This ultrahigh-resolution "precision" CT scanner (UHR-CT) contains detector rows with half the width than currently available systems (0.25 mm vs. 0.5 mm) resulting in approximately twice the spatial resolution. The purpose of this investigation is to test the hypothesis that high-resolution CTA is not inferior to the current standard of cardiac catheterization for identifying significant CHD in patients with high-risk characteristics, including severe coronary artery calcification and coronary stents. The investigators propose to enroll 50 patients over 24-30 months in this investigation as part of a multicenter study. Patients referred for cardiac catheterization with known CHD and suspected obstructive coronary artery stenosis will be included. All patients will undergo both cardiac catheterization and UHR-CT for determining significant CHD as defined by coronary functional assessment. The primary end point will be the diagnostic accuracy by area-under-curve (AUC) method for identifying patients with hemodynamically significant CHD. Read Less

This study is being conducted to provide access to and collect test data for an established nuclear medicine diagnostic imaging test called Positron Emission Tomography (PET), using a specific radioactive drug called Ammonia N-13 (Ammonia), referred to simply as an Ammonia PET scan, which is used to visualize the blood flow through the blood vessels and into the heart muscle in order to identify areas of restricted blood flow within the heart. The scanner used in this study may be a stand-alone PET scanner or a PET/CT scanner, which combines the PET scanner and a Computed Tomography (CT) scanner into a single device. Unless otherwise stated in this consent form, the term PET will be used to refer to both stand-alone PET and PET/CT scanners. While physicians have used the Ammonia PET test for many years to visualize (image) the blood flow into the heart muscle (perfusion), it is now possible to also measure the flow of blood into the heart muscle. Research studies have demonstrated clinical value in reviewing the measured blood flow values in addition to reviewing the perfusion images of blood flow into the heart muscle. Therefore, this study will establish a database of a large number of Ammonia PET measured blood flow values to serve as a future reference. Read Less

Traditionally, the severity of a blockage (stenosis) in a coronary artery has been determined by visual angiographic assessment of the diameter of the artery at the level of a blockage compared to a normal healthy area of the same artery. With the advent of invasive physiological testing to assess coronary blood flow, multiple clinical trials have demonstrated a clinical benefit to a physiology-guided percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) approach. However, despite this and the potential for significant variation in the interpretation of coronary artery stenosis severity by visual angiography alone to guide PCI, invasive physiologic indices remain significantly under-utilized. The purpose of this study is to investigate the physiologic significance of coronary lesions deemed angiographically severe by visual estimation that are planned for PCI. The investigators plan to perform blinded physiologic assessment pre and post PCI. The primary aim of the study is to determine whether a subset of lesions visually estimated as severe by angiography treated with stent placement/PCI may in fact not be physiologically significant when assessed invasively, and thus PCI could safely be deferred in these patients. A secondary aim is to evaluate physiologic assessment post PCI to detect residual ischemia that could be utilized to optimize stent placement. Read Less

Clopidogrel is the P2Y12 inhibitor of choice in PCI patients requiring OAC. However, concerns have been raised based on the notion that a considerable number of patients may have inadequate response to clopidogrel. Although practice recommendations indicate that the use of potent P2Y12 inhibitors (i.e., ticagrelor) may be considered in patients at increased thrombotic risk, they do not recommend routine testing to identify patients with poor response to clopidogrel. The aim of this study is to assess the pharmacodynamic effects of different P2Y12 inhibiting therapy (clopidogrel vs ticagrelor) in patients at high risk for high platelet reactivity identified according to the ABCD-GENE score in PCI treated patients also requiring OAC. Up to a total of up to 63 patients are planned to be prospectively enrolled in this investigation which will entail a series of comprehensive pharmacodynamic assessments to reach the study aim. Read Less

The purpose of this study is to see if reducing the number of hours during which one eats each day will help reduce levels of LDL cholesterol and improve other markers of metabolic and cardiovascular health (i.e. blood sugar levels and blood pressure). The study also aims to assess changes in exercise capacity and trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) levels in response to Time Restricted Eating (TRE) and Intensive Cardiac Rehabilitation (ICR) versus ICR alone. TMAO is a metabolite, or a substance, produced during digestion and metabolism. Preliminary data illustrates a correlation between high levels of TMAO and higher risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality. We will also be looking at participants' long-term cardiovascular health status after they complete the ICR program. Read Less

We propose a single-scan two-injection myocardial perfusion imaging protocol using ammonia. Subjects will undergo single-scan two-injection imaging as well as regular stress single-scan single-injection protocol and the myocardial blood flow of both techniques will be compared. Read Less

This study hopes to provide significant technical improvement in a Myocardial Blood Flow (MBF) cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) quantification technique to address challenges and technical limitations for MBF CMR. By developing and validating novel techniques to improve first-pass perfusion (FPP) cardiac MR, we propose to increase diagnostic accuracy by minimizing false positives and false negatives, allow for better evaluation and accurate quantification of total ischemic burden and reduce image and motion-induced artifacts. The broad, long-term objective of the proposed project is to improve the prognosis of patients with myocardial ischemia caused by coronary artery disease (CAD) or coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD). Read Less