Nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging in stable angina pectoris

Excerpt

Every day physicians balance clinical information with medical test results when confronted with symptomatic patients. Sometimes they find themselves in an apparently contradicting situation in which a patient has persistent complaints while his or her medical tests are normal. In this issue of the Netherlands Heart Journal, Yokota et al. addressed this matter in the setting of stable angina pectoris [1]. The authors performed a retrospective analysis of all patients who had undergone nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging in their centre and selected those with a normal scan but with persistent or worsening complaints that compelled the treating physician to order an invasive angiogram. Out of more than 11,000 patients, 229 fulfilled the study criteria. …