Cardiovascular magnetic resonance for diagnosis of coronary artery disease: quo vadis?. (May 2012)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dwivedi, Girish; Wells, R Glenn; Chow, Benjamin JW
• Is Part Of: Expert review of medical devices. Volume 9:Number 3(2012)
• Page Start: 219
• Page End: 224
• Publication Date: 2012-05
• Subjects: cardiac magnetic resonance -- coronary artery disease -- noninvasive imaging -- single photon emission computed tomography; Medical instruments and apparatus -- Periodicals; 610.28
• DOI: 10.1586/erd.12.19
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1743-4440

Abstract

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) has emerged as a potential modality for the diagnosis and risk stratification of patients with documented or suspected coronary artery disease. As such, it may be used as an alternative to other accepted noninvasive modalities. In the Clinical Evaluation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Coronary Heart Disease (CE-MARC) study, Greenwood et al. enrolled 752 patients with suspected angina pectoris and at least one cardiovascular risk factor, and evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of multiparametric CMR and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and compared them with invasive coronary angiography as the reference standard. The authors reported significantly higher sensitivity and negative predictive values for CMR (86.5 and 90.5%, respectively) compared with SPECT (66.5 and 79.1%, respectively) and recommended that CMR be used more frequently than at present for the investigation of coronary artery disease. This robustly designed landmark trial certainly adds to the already impressive diagnostic data available with CMR in such patients, but being a new technique, it lacks the large outcome data available with SPECT. In summary, the results of this study confirm the promise for CMR, but further work and larger multicenter studies are required before its adoption into routine clinical practice.