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In diagnosis and assessment of coronary artery disease, 256-row CT angiography compares well with invasive coronary angiography, Taiwanese researchers report online March 16th in the European Heart Journal.

As senior author Dr. Kou-Gi Shyu told Reuters Health by email, "256-CT angiography is a sensitive diagnostic tool and has a high negative predictive value. It may be a potential alternative to detect coronary artery disease and rule out coronary artery disease."

Dr. Shyu of Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, Taipei, and colleagues evaluated 104 patients with both the invasive and noninvasive angiography techniques. They found obstructive coronary artery disease in 86.

Compared to invasive angiography for identifying patients with stenosis of 50% or more, CT angiography had a sensitivity of 98.8%, a specificity of 50.0%, a positive predictive value of 92.4%, and a negative predictive value of 87.5%.


For identifying segments with at least 50% stenosis, CT had sensitivity of 93.5%, specificity of 95.0%, and positive and negative predictive values of 77.6% and 98.7%, respectively. For vessel-based analyses, these rates were 94.3%, 87.3%, 82.7%, and 95.9%.

The researchers concede that their study population was small and that interpretation and reconstruction of the images was operator-dependent. They point out, however, that even in the early phase of their learning curve, 256-row CT angiography produced favorable results. "In the hands of more experienced operators, the results might be even better," they conclude.

Source: ACR

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