The use of Cardiac 123I-mIBG Scintigraphy in Clinical Practice: The Necessity to Standardize!

Abstract

Cardiac adrenergic imaging has a great potential in a wide variety of clinical applications. Cardiac 123 I-meta-iodobenzylguanidine (123 I-mIBG) scintigraphy has a key role to assess chronic heart failure (CHF) by risk stratifying patients for cardiac events. The mIBG is a norepinephrine (NE) analogue that can evaluate cardiac sympathetic activity by assessing the down expression of β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) in CHF. Furthermore, ¹²³I-mIBG scintigraphy in combination with other parameters of left ventricular function can be used to identify the best responder for implantable cardiac devices, as well as to assess oncological cardiotoxicity. Despite its usefulness, 123 I-mIBG scintigraphy is not widely performed because of the lack of standardization between different institutions. Thus, standardization and validation may contribute to its acceptance in clinical setting.