Comprehensive cardiac CT scan may give clearer picture of significant hea...(/p Participants first had a cardiac C...),Health

Participants first had a cardiac CT taken while receiving an infusion of adenosine, which produces physiologic stress symptoms such as elevated heart rate and blood pressure. When vital signs returned to normal several minutes after the adenosine infusion, a resting cardiac CT was taken. Both of those scans involved the use of contrast material, and to detect areas with little or no contrast agent indicating restrictions to the myocardial vasculature a third CT scan was taken 7 minutes later.

The accuracy of CT-based perfusion imaging in diagnosing coronary artery narrowing that significantly affected myocardial perfusion was virtually the same as SPECT stress imaging, and the results of coronary CT angiography also compared favorably to those of cardiac catheterization. Because the investigators used new radiation-dose-reduction techniques, the radiation dose of the three CT scans did not exceed the dosage involved in the SPECT stress perfusion study.

"While nuclear perfusion imaging provides information that can help guide patient treatment, it has limitations that can lead to either false negative or false positive findings," Cury explains. "The ability to acquire anatomical visualization of coronary artery stenosis together with physiological assessment of myocardial perfusion in a single study could improve diagnostic accuracy while potentially reducing costs and radiation exposure. Since our study was relatively small, we need to test this approach in a larger multicenter trial and further investigate the additional value of CT perfusion studies over CT angiography." A consulting radiologist at MGH, Cury recently joined the Baptist Cardiac and Vascular Institute in Miami.

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