Investigation of aortocoronary artery bypass grafts by multislice spiral computed tomography with electrocardiographic-gated image reconstruction

To determine the ability of contrast-enhanced retrospectively electrocardiographic-gated multislice spiral computed tomography (MSCT) for the noninvasive visualization of coronary artery bypass grafts and detection of significant bypass stenoses, we performed a direct comparison to invasive coronary angiography in a group of 65 patients with a total of 182 coronary artery bypass grafts. MSCT demonstrated a high sensitivity (97%) and specificity (98%) for the evaluation of bypass graft patency and a satisfactory diagnostic accuracy for the detection of high-grade bypass stenoses (sensitivity 75%, specficity 92%) in evaluable bypass grafts.