Better Results for Patients at Risk for CAD with High-Res Coronary CT Angiography

May 29, 2014

High resolution coronary CT angiography provides better results among patients at high risk for CAD than does standard resolution coronary angiography.

High resolution (HR) coronary CT angiography could be a useful tool in assessing patients at high risk for coronary artery disease (CAD), according to a study published in the journal Radiology.

Researchers from Italy performed a randomized study of 184 patients who were at high risk for CAD to evaluate the image quality, evaluability, diagnostic accuracy and radiation exposure of HR coronary CT angiography, compared with standard spatial resolution (SR). All patients underwent invasive coronary angiography (ICA) within seven days of undergoing SR coronary CT angiography (91 patients) or HR coronary CT angiography (93).

The results showed that there were advantages from the HR coronary CT angiographies compared with the SR coronary CT angiographies:

		HR coronary CT angiography	SR coronary CT angiography
Image quality score	3.7	3.4
Evaluability	97 percent	92 percent
Specificity	98 percent	95 percent
Positive predictive value	91 percent	80 percent
Accuracy	99 percent	95 percent
Agreement with ICA for calcified plaques	83 percent	53 percent

Higher specificity and accuracy were also seen in patient based analysis: HR coronary CT angiography specificity of 91 percent, compared with SR at 46 percent, and HR coronary CT angiography accuracy of 98 percent, compared with SR at 92 percent.

The authors concluded that these findings suggest “a potential use for this technology in patients at high risk for CAD.”