Multi-Detector Coronary CT Imaging for the Identification of Coronary Artery Stenoses in a "Real-World" Population.

Background: Multi-detector computed tomography (CT) has emerged as a modality for the non-invasive assessment of coronary artery disease (CAD). Prior studies have selected patients for evaluation and have excluded many of the "real-world" patients commonly encountered in daily practice. We compared 64-detector-CT (64-CT) to conventional coronary angiography (CA) to investigate the accuracy of 64-CT in determining significant coronary stenoses in a "real-world" clinical population.

Aortic coarctation by cardiovascular CT angiography.

The patient is a 12-year-old boy who underwent prospectively gated step-and-shoot chest CT (computed tomographic) angiography with a 64-multislice CT scanner (64-MSCT) for a preliminary diagnosis of coarctation of aorta. The data was acquired in a manner to significantly minimize radiation to the patient, including use of 80 kVp (rather than 120 kVp, much more commonly employed in cardiac CT), low mA (120 mA, rather than typical 400 mA), and prospective acquisition using a VCT 64 detector scanner (General Electric, Milwaukee, WI) (Figs. 1 and 2).

New advances in cardiac computed tomography.

Purpose Of Review: Multidetector computed tomography has been growing in every way possible. The test is becoming more common in clinical practice. It has breached the public consciousness and is being asked for by name.

The great escape: junctional escape-capture bigeminy.

Escape-capture bigeminy is a bigeminal rhythm in which each escape beat is followed by a captured beat. This dysrhythmia is very rare, because its manifestation requires the sinus interval to be longer than the escape interval. This is possible only with severe sinus nodal disease, where the intrinsic sinus rate is extremely low, or with a sinus rhythm associated with an accelerated junctional rhythm.