Should the diagnosis of coronary artery disease be based on the evaluation of myocardial function or perfusion?

European Heart Journal
M L GeleijnseP M Fioretti

Abstract

The aim of this review was to define the place of stress (exercise, dobutamine, and vasodilator) echocardiography in the context of perfusion scintigraphic techniques for the detection of coronary artery disease. Echocardiography and nuclear imaging have their strong and weak points. Echocardiography has the benefit of widespread availability, relatively low cost, portability, absence of radiation, safety, and determination of ischaemic threshold. However, echocardiographic imaging cannot be performed during treadmill exercise, the echocardiographic windows are variable with sometimes poor echogenicity, and interpretation is subjective and requires an important learning curve. Diagnostic comparisons were focused on studies involving echocardiographic and nuclear imaging in the same patients. These direct comparisons show that exercise or dobutamine echocardiography and perfusion imaging have similar accuracies for the detection and localization of coronary artery disease. Perfusion imaging may be more sensitive in the detection of mild coronary artery disease; echocardiography, however, has a better specificity. Vasodilator perfusion imaging is superior to vasodilator echocardiography, although the new dipyridamole-atropine ech...Continue Reading

Citations

Nov 30, 2011·Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine·Angela S Koh, Ron Blankstein
Feb 25, 2003·Journal of the American College of Cardiology·Radha BholasinghRobbert J de Winter
Jun 5, 2003·Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography : Official Publication of the American Society of Echocardiography·Masaaki TakeuchiJunichi Yoshikawa
Dec 10, 1999·Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography : Official Publication of the American Society of Echocardiography·J PeteiroA Castro-Beiras
Sep 8, 1999·Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography : Official Publication of the American Society of Echocardiography·T ZaglavaraA Kenny

❮ Previous
Next ❯

Related Concepts

Related Feeds

Cardiology Journals

Discover the latest cardiology research in this collection of the top cardiology journals.

Cardiomyopathy

Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle, that can lead to muscular or electrical dysfunction of the heart. It is often an irreversible disease that is associated with a poor prognosis. There are different causes and classifications of cardiomyopathies. Here are the latest discoveries pertaining to this disease.