Nuclear cardiology: Finally a one-stop shop for diagnosis, risk stratification, and management of coronary artery disease

Value of nuclear cardiology for the diagnosis and risk stratifi cation of coronary artery disease

Beller et al. showed in the “anginal cascade”(1) that, with increasing stress time and myocardial oxygen demand, ischemic ST depression and anginal symptoms appear after fl ow heterogeneity, regional myocardial dysfunction, signifi cant perfusion defects and global left ventricular dysfunction. This accounts for the increased sensitivity, specifi city and accuracy of MPI over symptoms and stres...

Variation on a theme: CMR as the "one-stop shop" for risk stratification after infarction?

Predicting prognosis after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) remains clinically challenging, partly due to significant interpatient variability in risk profiles and what is often individualized therapeutic management. In addition, the risk of poor outcomes varies as a function of time from AMI, particularly in the period spanning initial hospital presentation to the time of discharge. Systemati...

Risk Stratification in Unstable Coronary Artery Disease

BACKGROUND Early risk assessment is essential for the application of appropriate treatment and further management in patients with unstable CAD. The early symptom-limited ET together with specific biochemical marker determination is an inexpensive, widely applicable method for early risk stratification. In women, however, the ET is considered less reliable, and there are few data on biochemical...

Anthropometric Measures and the Risk of Coronary Artery Disease

Contributions of nuclear cardiology to diagnosis and prognosis of patients with coronary artery disease.

In the past decade, significant advances have been made in the ability to image the heart with radionuclide tracers under stress and resting conditions in patients with suspected or known coronary artery disease (CAD) for the detection of ischemia, determination of prognosis, assessment of myocardial viability, preoperative risk assessment for patients undergoing noncardiac surgery, and evaluat...