Monday, April 4, 8:00-9:30 AM

When a SPECT myocardial perfusion study of a patient with persistent angina produced a normal result, the attending cardiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston suspected the study had missed something more serious.

In a highly selected group of patients with acute unstable or new-onset angina, coronary CT angiography (CCTA) was able to delineate features of plaque disruption, including ulceration and intraplaque dye penetration, which are specific markers of invasively identified complex plaque, according to a single-center study published in the March 16 Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.

Low-dose coronary CT angiography (CCTA) suggested that the sensitivity of the technique rivals catheter-based angiography and may offer an alternative to invasive angiography in ruling out coronary artery disease (CAD) in symptomatic patients, according to a meta-analysis of 16 studies published March 15 in Annals of Internal Medicine.

The agreement and operating characteristics of corrected coronary opacification (CCO) differences in identifying abnormal resting coronary flow seem to be very good and indicate its potential role in the assessment of functional coronary stenosis and measurement of stress coronary flow, according to a proof-of-concept study published in the March 15 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Exposure to ionizing radiation from cardiac imaging procedures following heart attack is associated with significantly increased rates of cancer, with each 10 mSv of cumulative radiation correlating with a 3 percent increased risk of developing cancer, a study published Feb. 7 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported.

Purdue University's Bindley Bioscience Center has installed U-SPECT-II/CT system, manufactured by MILabs, which will be used by researchers to capture molecular and anatomical images for medical research.

CT and MRI angiography yield similar accuracy in the diagnosis of coronary artery stenosis, with CT demonstrating a nonsignificant advantage and conventional angiography outperforming both, according to a study published in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.