A new type of imaging technique using an MRI device can detect most diseased coronary arteries, potentially sparing many heart patients a more invasive, expensive, and uncomfortable test, researchers say.

MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, has been used for the last 10 years to study very large blood vessels such as the aorta. Patients must lie inside the MRI machine, a giant electromagnet that yields 3-D images of the body.

Now doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have adapted the technology to produce a series of high-resolution images of the relatively small coronary arteries.
Two smaller studies found the system could spot arteries blocked or narrowed by plaque in patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease by the current “gold standard” test – the X-ray-based angiogram.

A new study – the first to try the system at several hospitals and on previously untested patients – found it detected every diseased coronary artery in 75 percent of the patients and found the most life-threatening blockages in 89 percent.

The MRI technique is still not as thorough as an angiogram, but it is less invasive.

“This technique is a significant advance,” said Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of the Cardiovascular Institute at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center. “In five years, I think it’s going to overtake the conventional angiogram.”

In an angiogram, a catheter is threaded from a groin or arm artery up to the heart. The catheter then injects a dye that can be seen on a “movie” X-ray, helping doctors spot blockages.

Angiograms produce very clear pictures but cause complications in about 1 percent of the 1.2 million patients getting the test each year.

© 2001 DallasNews.com

Published on DrKelley.info, December 31, 2001. Embedded links (if any) may no longer be active. (Ed. 01.11.11)

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