Myocardial Perfusion by Coronary Computed Tomography in the Evaluation of Myocardial Ischemia: Simultaneous Stress Protocol with SPECT.

Background: Functional assessment to rule out myocardial ischemia using coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is extremely important and data on the Brazilian population are still limited.

Objective: To assess the diagnostic performance of myocardial perfusion by CCTA in the detection of severe obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) compared with single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT). To analyze the importance of anatomical knowledge to understand the presence of myocardial perfusion defects on SPECT imaging that is not identified on computed tomography (CT) scan.

Practical Implications of Myocardial Viability Studies.

Many non-invasive methods, such as imaging tests, have been developed aiming to add a contribution to existing studies in estimating patients' prognosis after myocardial injury. This prognosis is proportional to myocardial viability, which is evaluated in coronary artery disease and left ventricular dysfunction patients only. While myocardial viability represents the likelihood of a dysfunctional muscle (resulting from decreased oxygen supply for coronary artery obstruction), hibernation represents post-interventional functional recovery itself.