ABSTRACT
Discrepancies Between IVUS and Angiography Coronary angiography significantly underestimates the presence, severity, and extent of atherosclerosis compared to IVUS (12). Furthermore, IVUS routinely shows significant atherosclerosis in angiographically “normal” segments in patients undergoing PCI (13). This discrepancy may be explained by three major factors: (i) atherosclerosis is often diffusely distributed involving long segments of the vessel containing no truly normal reference segment for comparison, (ii) complex atherosclerotic plaques are not appreciated by the two-dimensional “silhouette,” and (iii) most importantly, the presence of arterial wall remodeling (6).
