Do we need diagnostic strategies enhanced with genetic information for ischemic heart disease?

Excerpt

Although reliable information on left ventricular (LV) perfusion can be provided at stress with several imaging techniques, myocardial perfusion SPECT imaging (MPI) has the major advantages of being both relatively simple to perform and analyze, with very rare contraindications, and of providing a wide variety of stress and injection protocols, hence allowing this technique to be adapted to each patient and to different indications.1,2 To these advantages, we can add its current high image quality owing to recent technical and methodological advances—i.e., semiconductor detectors, new collimation systems, and/or novel reconstruction software 1,2—thus making MPI more reliable and relevant compared to the past. Moreover, as it can now be performed with a much lower radiation exposure, this evolution is particularly favorable for the growing number of patients referred for repeated ionizing procedures throughout the course of their life.3 …