"It's an incredible story."
That's how Dr. Justin Davies of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in the UK describes the development of the iFR (instant wave-free ratio) pressure sensor, which has just been approved by the FDA for use in treating coronary artery disease.
The sensor measures the pressure drop caused by a narrowing in the artery, which helps determine whether the patient requires medication alone or needs a stent to open the artery to improve blood flow, reports the New York Times.
The standard test for measuring this pressure drop, called FFR or Flow Reserve, involved injecting a hyperemic agent, which can be expensive in parts of the world, takes time to administer (often 2-5 minutes), and can result in uncomfortable effects for the patient, including chest pain, breathlessness, and anxiety.
But iFR doesn't require a pharmacological agent.
"I remember the first time a small group of us met and looked at the results of an early study and shared the excitement of seeing that this novel approach to stenosis interrogation actually worked," says Dr. Javier Escaned, head of the Interventional Section of the Hospital Clinico San Carlos in Spain, where iFR was developed.
Researchers studied more than 4,500 patients with coronary artery disease and found that iFR
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Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmentalist known for her activism against GMOs, globalization, and patents on seeds and traditional foods, co-founded Navdanya.