TIMI Frame Count

作者：C. Michael Gibson, Christopher Paul Cannon, William L. Daley, James T. Dodge, Barbara T. Alexander, Susan J. Marble, Carolyn H. McCabe, Lori Raymond, Terry Fortin, W. Kenneth Poole, Eugene Braunwald · 发表于：Circulation · 年份：1996 · DOI：10.1161/01.cir.93.5.879 · 被引用次数：1874 · 研究领域：Acute Myocardial Infarction Research、Cardiac Imaging and Diagnostics、Coronary Interventions and Diagnostics

BACKGROUND: Although the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) flow grade is valuable and widely used qualitative measure in angiographic trials, it is limited by its subjective and categorical nature. METHODS AND RESULTS: In normal patients and patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) (TIMI 4), the number of cineframes needed for dye to reach standardized distal landmarks was counted to objectively assess an index of coronary blood flow as a continuous variable. The TIMI frame-counting method was reproducible (mean absolute difference between two injections, 4.7 +/- 3.9 frames, n=85). In 78 consecutive normal arteries, the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) TIMI frame count (36.2 +/- 2.6 frames) was 1.7 times longer than the mean of the right coronary artery (20.4 +/- 3.0) and circumflex counts (22.2 +/- 4.1, P < .001 for either versus LAD). Therefore, the longer LAD frame counts were corrected by dividing by 1.7 to derive the corrected TIMI frame count (CTFC). The mean CTFC in culprit arteries 90 minutes after thrombolytic administration followed a continuous unimodal distribution (there were not subpopulations of slow and fast flow) with a mean value of 39.2 +/- 20.0 frames, which improved to 31.7 +/- 12.9 frames by 18 to 36 hours (P < .001). No correlation existed between improvements in CTFCs and changes in minimum lumen diameter (r=-.05, P=.59). The mean 90-minute CTFC among nonculprit arteries (25.5 +/- 9.8) was significantly higher (flow was s...