Decrease in the frequency of stress-induced ischemia over the past two decades

Excerpt

A recent publication by Rozanski et al1 reported on the marked decrease in the frequency of inducible ischemia in patients undergoing stress-rest myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) over the time period from 1991 to 2009. The study comes from a single medical center at which 39,515 patients underwent SPECT MPI over this period of nearly two decades. The overall frequency of abnormal SPECT MPI studies markedly decreased from 40.9% in the years 1991-1995 to 8.7% in the years from 2006 to 2009. The authors also found a marked decline in the prevalence of ischemia, falling from 29.6% to 5.0%. Similarly, there was an impressive decrease in the prevalence of patients who had a summed difference score of ≥10%, from 14.6% to 2.5%. …