Ischemia.
Reinvented.

Morton J. Kern, MD, MSCAI, FACC, FAHA, is a professor of medicine at the University of California, Irvine, and former Chief of Cardiology and Chief of Medicine at the Long Beach Veterans Administration Medical Center. He practices interventional cardiology and teaches cardiology fellows cardiac catheterization and percutaneous coronary interventions.

Kern is the author of several major textbooks, including The Cardiac Catheterization Handbook, which is used nationally and internationally to train physicians in the subject, and published the second edition of the SCAI Interventional Cardiology Board Review.

His research interests include coronary physiology, hemodynamics, and invulnerable plaque.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are solely those of Dr. Morton J. Kern and do not necessarily reflect the views or official policy of Cleerly. The information provided is intended for general informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Cleerly makes no representation or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of the information provided and disclaims any and all liability for errors or omissions.

Transcript

I think we've entered a time in the treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD) that moves well beyond routine stress testing and into our advanced assessment of the vessel, the wall, the myocardium and the potential for future risk in a noninvasive approach.

So in patients who are suspected of having ischemia due to coronary artery disease, we have a number of modalities to test for limited blood flow. Commonly used every day in every clinical practice around the world. And they are markers of limited blood flow in most circumstances. However, they have a high rate of false positives and a modestly high rate of false negatives. So they are not a standard that we can rely on 100%.

Computed tomography angiography (CTA) coupled with physiology, has become very important to the decision making before we come into the cath lab.

For several years there's been involvement of CT FFR generated through a number of mathematical models and provide us with anatomy and ischemia for that vessel and a map of the heart.

Cleerly has used another method to get that similar type of result. So we have the anatomy, we have an ischemic potential of that vessel, but we also have more features. It incorporates many more variables than any of our other tools and it comes out with a refined decision point for us. We can use the Cleerly tool to talk to us about anatomy and physiology, and have our answer in one test.

The role that artificial intelligence plays in the generation of the information that comes out of that Cleerly tool is unique in that it encompasses an entire array of variable inputs. It processes them, couples them with the information on the vessel wall, and information we get from CT and we get a refined response to ischemia.

We find out through this model that we're going to be able to predict ischemia. And it's not the AI itself, it's the net result of having all this available to us in an ischemia tool. Which make the risk in that individual more easily identified and result in an outcome, when tested through the Cleerly modality, that gives us some information we may not have through any of the other modalities.

When we look at some of the preliminary data and early studies with the Cleerly product, it looks like there is increased specificity with the method of Cleerly to give us risk of a major adverse event in our patients going forward. This is something that is not as strongly developed or available in other modalities.

The Cleerly method for looking at the CTA provides more information than almost any of the other CTAs do. And with that, we're able to look at different aspects of the vessel that would change the way we would treat it. And I think this makes the Cleerly product a potential game changer.