SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) studies were performed on 189 diabetic patients. Although ECG changes were observed in only 14% of the patients in the study, SPECT revealed stress-induced ischemic defects in more than 56% of the participants. Moreover, these defects were more prevalent in patients in the asymptomatic group than in those with a history of chest pain, regardless of the age or sex of the participant.
John O. Prior, MD, PhD, and colleagues from the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne, Switzerland, presented the results of a study on the use of single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) MPI to evaluate the presence of "silent" myocardial ischemia in diabetic patients undergoing cardiac assessment. Myocardial ischemia, a deficiency of blood supply to the heart muscle as a result of obstruction or constriction of the coronary arteries, is a leading cause of death among individuals with diabetes and often progresses without overt warning to a point at which cardiac damage is irreversible.
According to the American Diabetes Association, heart disease is a factor in 75% of diabetes-related deaths and results in more than 77,000 deaths in diabetics annually in the United States.
For the study, patients were analyzed for stress-induced ischemia. Patients were divided into two groups, those who had previously experienced chest pain and those who had not. Stress was induced either on a bicycle ergometer or, in those patients unable to exercise, by perfusion of dipyridamole. The defects were also more prevalent in those unable to exercise and in those who had presented ECG abnormalities on earlier tests. Stress-induced ischemic defects have been shown to accurately predict the
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Contact: Karen Lubieniecki
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Society of Nuclear Medicine
17-Jun-2002