SPECT and PET in ischemic heart failure.

Heart failure is a common clinical syndrome associated with significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of heart failure, at least in the industrialized countries. Proper diagnosis of the syndrome and management of patients with heart failure require anatomical and functional information obtained through various imaging modalities.

Myocardial bridge: an unusual cause of asymptomatic ST-elevation during treadmill stress test causing functional ischaemia.

Myocardial bridges are congenital structural abnormalities with debated clinical relevance; they may be traditionally asymptomatic or associated with various clinical manifestations, some of which may be potentially fatal. We report on a 60 years old man, who underwent a follow-up stress/rest myocardial perfusion scintigraphy developing asymptomatic exercise-induced ST-elevation and demonstrating completely reversible ischaemia in the scintigraphic images. Subsequent coronary angiography showed no artery stenosis, but revealed an intramyocardial pathway of the left anterior descending artery throughout a myocardial bridge.

Incidental pathologic extracardiac uptake of 99mTc-tetrofosmin in myocardial perfusion imaging.

Technetium-99m-tetrofosmin ((99m)Tc-TF) myocardial perfusion studies have incidentally detected various extracardiac abnormalities. The interpretation of these findings may be essential for early diagnosis and treatment of important diseases. We present a rare case of a mediastinal thymoma incidently detected during myocardial perfusion imaging.