Assessment of coronary lesion length using visual estimation or quantitative coronary angiography can be unreliable. We tested the accuracy of a new handheld caliper device to measure lesion length in a bench-top model and in eight patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Caliper-derived length measurements were compared to the known reference distance in the bench-top model and visual or intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)-derived measurements in vivo. In the coronary model, caliper-derived measurements were accurate and correlated well with known reference distances regardless of the angiographic projection. During PCI, there was a poor correlation between the best visual estimate of length and IVUS-derived measurements. In contrast, caliper-derived measurements correlated closely with IVUS-derived measurements. This handheld caliper provides a simple and accurate method of assessing intracoronary lesion length and may be particularly useful during coronary stenting and when adjunctive brachytherapy is performed.
Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.