Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus is the first hospital in the region to offer HeartFlow® Fractional Flow Reserve Computed Tomography (FFR-CT), an advanced, noninvasive technology that enables physicians to determine whether a patient has heart disease.
FFR-CT is very low risk and provides accurate information about conditions of the arteries. This new technology is beneficial for patients who may have heart disease and are experiencing symptoms of chest pain and shortness of breath.
HeartFlow® technology with FFR-CT calculates how blood is flowing through the coronary arteries and helps physicians identify whether a patient has coronary artery disease before undergoing invasive and possibly unnecessary catheter-based testing. It can also assess whether a specific plaque in a coronary artery is restricting blood flow, helping physicians determine whether a patient would benefit from stents or bypass surgery. HeartFlow® FFR-CT provides an astonishingly sharp, three-dimensional digital image of blood vessels.
“The ability to reduce invasive and potentially unnecessary coronary angiograms with a single comprehensive and noninvasive diagnostic test is an important advancement for patients.” says Frank J. Vozos, M.D., FACS, Executive Vice President, RWJBarnabas Health and Chief Executive at MMCSC. “I’m extremely proud that MMCSC is one of the first hospitals in the area to provide this technology to Monmouth and Ocean County residents.”
“We can determine, vessel by vessel, both the extent of an artery’s narrowing and the impact that the narrowing has on blood flow to the heart,” explains Rajesh Mohan, MD, MBA, FACC, FSCAI, Chief Medical Officer who is also an interventional cardiologist. “This cutting-edge technology uses sophisticated software that combines blood flow with the anatomy of the heart to determine the significance of blockages, if any, with great accuracy and helps doctors determine what types of interventions, are necessary. Most importantly, the introduction of this new technology will combine human intelligence and artificial intelligence to help the vast majority of patients avoid unnecessary invasive testing.” says Dr. Mohan