Coronary CT angiography in patients with chest pain

Abstract

Multi-slice CT is a new and evolving non-invasive technology to visualize the coronary arteries. It was found to be safe and reliable to detect or exclude the presence of quality-of-life-limiting CAD. Multislice CT appears to be useful as a first-line imaging technique in carefully selected patients to evaluate the need for ICA. While clinical reliability of 4-slice CT scanners is questionable in patients with higher heart rates, severe calcification, shortness of breath, and high body mass index, 16-slice CT and, even more so, 64-slice CT provide sufficient robustness to justify introducing multi-slice coronary CTA for patients with chest pain into clinical practice. Further studies with larger patient numbers and the use of later-generation scanner technology are required to underline the place of multi-slice CT in the diagnostic algorithm of CAD in patients with chest pain. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.