Impact of myocardial perfusion imaging on clinical management and the utilization of hospital resources in suspected acute coronary syndromes

Recent advances in the treatment of acute coronary syndromes has raised awareness in the community that prompt presentation for chest pain may be life saving. Each year in the United States, more than 6 million people present to the hospital with an acute chest pain, making this the most common presenting chief complaint second only to abdominal pain. Most patients presenting with chest discomfort have a non-ischaemic electrocardiogram on presentation. However, these patients are routinely admitted to hospital due to diagnostic uncertainty for occult myocardial infarction or ischaemia. As an approach to this dilemma, many hospitals have created protocols as a means of facilitating the identification of infarction and ischaemia and the safe and effective triage of patients with a chief complaint of chest pain. Myocardial perfusion imaging at rest has been shown to be highly sensitive for the detection of acute myocardial infarction, and can be supplemented with provocative testing after infarction has been excluded. Diagnostic strategies that utilize myocardial perfusion imaging for the evaluation of acute chest pain have successfully improved the triage of these patients by avoiding inadvertent discharge of patients with myocardial infarctions, and reducing unnecessary hospital admissions and overall cost and expenditure. ((C) 2003 Lippincott Williams Wilkins).