Coronary microcirculation and reperfusion failure. Do we know what diagnostic tools we have?

Abstract

Almost one in five patient has reperfusion abnormalities despite the type of percutaneous interventional procedure after acute myocardial infarction. It has been shown with myocardial contrast echocardiographic and coronary angiographic studies that infarct related artery patency does not always correlate with the presence of adequate myocardial perfusion in the infarct related artery territory. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain further diagnostic and evaluation tools to assess coronary microcirculation and reperfusion failure. ST segment resolution time, TIMI flow grade, TIMI Frame Count and TIMI Myocardial Perfusion Grade (blush score) are helpful tools to assess myocardial perfusion and diagnosis of reperfusion abnormalities.