Dear Cardiac Insider,
Like conversations about the weather, it seems as if doctors spend a lot of time talking about atherosclerosis as a systemic disease, but they tend to do nothing about it.
Radiologists in Rome, however, are actually doing something about systemic atherosclerosis. In fact, the outlook for their whole-body CT angiography (CTA) examination -- which outperforms the Framingham risk index and identifies high-grade stenoses beyond the coronaries -- is decidedly sunny.
The group examined nearly 500 patients who were asymptomatic but had multiple risk factors for coronary artery disease. Five years later they concluded that cardiac CTA not only predicted cardiovascular events better than the Framingham risk index, it better stratified patient risk. Visit our Cardiac Imaging Digital Community, or get the story here.
Take care of your brain to protect your heart, concludes an intriguing new MRI study from the European Heart Journal. Dr. Osvaldo Almeida, PhD, and colleagues found that heart failure was associated with specific areas of gray-matter loss in the brain, in a story you'll find here.
Further evidence of the clinical capabilities of dual-source CT is gradually emerging. New research from Spain and the U.S. has found that the technique compares well with MRI and SPECT in performing sophisticated cardiac scans that combine anatomic and functional imaging for a comprehensive assessment of patients with suspected coronary artery disease. Click here to read more.
An era of increasing focus on radiation dose and cost-effectiveness is no time to drop radioisotope imaging, according to a story by editor-in-chief Philip Ward. When physicians at Royal London Hospital compared technetium-99m sestamibi myocardial perfusion (MIBI) to CT and MRI, they found good correlation among the three exams. The ability to demonstrate cardiac wall motion and good sensitivity in predicting reversible myocardial ischemia were two areas where the MIBI scan excelled, the study team found in a story you'll find here.
We invite you to scroll through the links below for more cutting-edge news in your Cardiac Imaging Digital Community. And we'll be on hand at this week's European Congress of Radiology in Vienna to bring you more, so stay tuned.
