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CCTA More Positive Patient Experience Than MPI
Diagnostic Imaging Staff
Patients who undergo coronary CT angiography receive lower radiation doses and are more pleased with the experience than with MPI.
Coronary CT angiography (CCTA) performed on patients with acute chest pain provides lower radiation dose and yielded fewer unpleasant experiences among the patients than SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI), according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers from Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, performed a randomized, controlled, comparative effectiveness trial in order to compare CCTA with conventional noninvasive testing.
A total of 400 patients with acute chest pain, mean age 57, participated in the study:
• 54% of patients were Hispanic
• 37% were African-American
• 63% were women
The results showed that the CCTA and MPI groups did not significantly differ in outcomes or resource utilization over 40 months:
| CCTA | MPI | |
| Cardiac catheterization within 1 year | 30 patients (15%) | 32 patients (16%) |
| No revascularization within 1 year | 15 patients (7.5%) | 20 patients (10%) |
| Median length of stay | 28.9 hours | 30.4 hours |
| Incidence of death over follow-up | 0.5% | 3% |
| Nonfatal cardiovascular events | 4.5% | 4.5% |
| Rehospitalization | 43% | 49% |
| Emergency department visit | 63% | 58% |
| Outpatient cardiology visit | 23% | 21% |
| Long-term, all-cause radiation exposure | 24 mSv | 29 mSv |
“More patients in the CCTA group graded their experience favorably and would undergo the examination again,” the authors wrote.