Scintigraphy for the detection of myocardial damage in the indeterminate form of Chagas disease.

BACKGROUND Non-invasive cardiological methods have been used for the identification of myocardial damage in Chagas disease. OBJECTIVE To verify whether the rest/stress myocardial perfusion scintigraphy is able to identify early myocardial damage in the indeterminate form of Chagas disease. METHODS Eighteen patients with the indeterminate form of Chagas Disease and the same number of normal controls, paired by sex and age, underwent rest/stress myocardial scintigraphy using sestamibi-99mTc, aiming at detecting early cardiac damage. RESULTS The results did not show perfusion or ventricular function defects in patients at the indeterminate phase of Chagas disease and in the normal controls, except for a patient who presented signs of ventricular dysfunction in the myocardial perfusion scintigraphy with electrocardiographic gating. CONCLUSION The results of this study, considering the small sample size, showed that the rest/stress myocardial scintigraphy using sestamibi-99mTc is not an effective method to detect early myocardial alterations in the indeterminate form of Chagas disease.