[Cardiac SPECT/CT: correlation between atherosclerosis, significant coronary artery stenoses and myocardial perfusion parameters in patients with known coronary artery disease].

Invasive coronary angiography (ICA) and CT angiography (CTA) both enable significant coronary artery stenoses to be detected, but they are not suitable for assessing their hemodynamic relevance. This can be accomplished using myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) which, however, has limited specificity and spatial resolution. Regarding patients with known coronary artery disease (CAD) it is furthermore important to stratify patient's individual risk for severe cardiac events to guide therapy management.The results of our investigations in 158 patients with CAD indicate that global and regional calcium scores (CAC) do not correlate with the presence of myocardial perfusion defects and significant coronary artery stenoses, respectively. However, published literature has reported CAC as being an independent predictor of long-time survival.For clinical purposes it seems that non-invasive diagnostics with CTA, MPS and CAC screening can be useful even in patients with known CAD. CAC and global scar burden enable long-term risk-stratification, whereas fusion of CTA and MPS is useful to detect the culprit lesion of relevant perfusion defects and to select options for revascularization.