Coronary angiography is the current standard for detecting coronary artery disease (CAD), an invasive procedure that involves running a tube from a blood vessel below the heart up toward the heart itself, and then releasing contrast material into the arteries so they are visible on x-rays.

These days, coronary artery disease is the number one killer in the Western Hemisphere, affecting more than 13 million Americans. So, there is a huge need for a preliminary, noninvasive way to assess the arteries to determine if such invasive investigation like coronary angiography is required.

Featured in the July issue of Radiology is a study on a new cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that can noninvasively demonstrate blockage of the coronary arteries with high diagnostic accuracy.

The authors applied a technique called stress first-pass perfusion MRI in combination with a delayed contrast-enhancement technique. This approach is different than the typical MRI sequences used to investigate the coronary arteries.

With this combined technique, the researchers injected patients with a contrast material and then performed MRI at timed intervals to see if there was heart muscle ischemia attributable to coronary artery blockage and if there was damage (either tissue death or scarring) that indicated a prior heart attack.

Responsible for such a breakthrough are researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School in Boston and Beneficencia Portuguesa Hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The new MRI technique when compared against the current diagnostic standard, coronary angiography (an invasive procedure), yielded 88 percent accuracy; therefore showing that this new MRI technique can potentially be used to enhance clinical decision-making and guide appropriate disease management such as when deciding whether or not to proceed with a more invasive modality like cardiac catheterization or coronary artery bypass surgery.

Source: EurekAlert

Photo Credit: CRL Surgical