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Dipyridamole stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) is useful for predicting major coronary events in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD), according to a new report. Dipyridamole stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) is useful for predicting major coronary events in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD), according to a report in the September 18th issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

"Taking into account its high accuracy and reliability, the fact that it is less dependent on operator's expertise than other imaging techniques, and the possibility of simultaneously assessing a wide variety of indexes, stress CMR is becoming a gold standard in the evaluation of patients with known or suspected ischemic heart disease," Dr. Vicente Bodi from the University of Valencia, Spain told Reuters Health.

Dr. Bodi and colleagues investigated the prognostic value of dipyridamole stress CMR in 420 consecutive patients with chest pain of possible coronary origin.

All CMR indexes predicted major adverse coronary events (MACE), the authors report, but only the extent of abnormal wall motion (AWM) with dipyridamole was independently related to MACE in the multivariate analysis.

Patients who experienced major events had a larger extent of AWM at rest and with dipyridamole, a greater perfusion deficit, and delayed enhancement, compared with patients who did not have major events.

Results were similar when only the non-revascularized patients were studied.

"We believe that stress CMR is a very good option in those patients in whom more traditional and available techniques, such as exercise ECG, are inconclusive," Dr. Bodi said. "Currently this population represents up to 50 per cent of patients with chest pain.