Analysis of the degree of pulmonary thallium washout after exercise in patients with coronary artery disease.

An abnormal increase in pulmonary thallium activity may be visualized on post-stress thallium images in patients with coronary artery disease. Because this increased pulmonary thallium activity usually disappears by the time of redistribution imaging, this study was designed to assess whether measurement of the degree of pulmonary thallium washout between stress and redistribution might improve the detection of increased pulmonary thallium activity in patients with coronary artery disease. Quantitative analysis revealed abnormal (that is, greater than 2 standard deviations of normal values) pulmonary thallium washouts in 59 (64%) of 92 patients with coronary artery disease, but in only 2 (25%) of 8 subjects with angiographically normal arteries (p less than 0.06). By comparison, the visual analysis of pulmonary thallium washout and use of initial pulmonary to myocardial thallium ratio were significantly (p less than 0.05) less sensitive in detecting abnormality in patients with coronary artery disease. Abnormal pulmonary thallium washout was related to both the anatomic extent and functional severity of disease: it occurred with greatest frequency in patients with multivessel disease and in those with exercise-induced left ventricular dysfunction (p less than 0.005). When added to the quantitative analysis of myocardial scintigraphy, the analysis of pulmonary thallium washout increased the detection of coronary artery disease from 84 to 93% (p less than 0.05), but the sample size was too small to assess specificity. Thus, the analysis of pulmonary thallium washout is a useful diagnostic variable because it: 1) provides an objective measurement of abnormal pulmonary thallium activity and is more sensitive than other methods; 2) correlates with both the extent of coronary artery disease and the degree of exercise-induced left ventricular dysfunction, and 3) improves the sensitivity of quantitative myocardial thallium scintigraphy to detect the presence of coronary artery disease.