• Enrique Vallejo, César Acevedo, Samuel Varela, José Carlos Alburez, and David Bialostozky.
• Servicio de Cardiología Nuclear, Instituto Nacional de Cardiología Ignacio Chávez, México. vallejo.enrique@gmail.com
• Gac Med Mex. 2012 Jan 1; 148 (1): 6-13.

UnlabelledSingle photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) myocardial perfusion imaging is widely used for diagnosing coronary artery disease (CAD). However, SPECT costs, imaging time, and radiation exposure, limit SPECT indications.ObjectiveDetermine whether a stress-only SPECT imaging would be enough to obtain a diagnosis of CAD improving nuclear laboratory efficiency.Methods122 patients with unknown CAD were evaluated with stress-only SPECT imaging. In order to evaluate diagnostic accuracy and the prognostic value of the stress-only protocol, patients with abnormal SPECT underwent invasive angiography and patients with normal SPECT were followed-up during 3 years.ResultsDiagnosis time, SPECT cost, and radiopharmaceutical dosage were significantly lower as compared with the conventional SPECT imaging protocol (30, 40 and 55%, respectively). Diagnostic accuracy and cardiac prognosis information were comparable to those obtained with the conventional imaging protocol (positive predictive value for CAD of 85% and negative predictive value for cardiac events of 97%).ConclusionsIn patients with intermediate risk for CAD, stress-only SPECT imaging will significantly improve nuclear laboratory efficiency, and with similar accuracy than that the one obtained with the conventional protocol.

13 keywords...

hide…