Is dipyridamole test equivalent to exercise testing for the performing of myocardial tomo-scintigraphy? preliminary results of a systematic comparative analysis in patients having documented episodes of myocardial ischemia

Dipyridamole test is generally used rather than exercise testing when myocardial tomo-scintigraphy (MTS) is performed with patients unable to perform a maximal exercise test. However, this choice has never been validated by a systematic comparative analysis of the results provided by these two stress techniques with patients having a documented myocardial ischemia. We have included 20 patients who had a known coronary artery disease, for whom exercise test was positive at the time of an exercise MTS-TI201 performed in our department and who underwent an additional MTS-TI201 after intravenous administration of 0,56 mg/kg of dipyridamole and low-level exercise testing (40 W). The extent of perfusion abnormalities, observed after dipyvirdamole, was not significantly different from that evidenced at exercise, even in the analysis restricted to the eight patients who had a sub-maximal test (<80 % of predicted maximal heart rate) at the time of exercise-MTS (% of left ventricle: 17 ± 13 vs 15 ± 8). By contrast, there were important individual variations: a difference in defect-extent (≥ 10 % of left ventricle) was observed between the two tests for 11 patients (55 %), the largest defect being that observed at exercise in six cases, and after dipyridamole in five cases. With patients having exercise myocardial ischemia, the MTS obtained after dipyridamole are frequently very different from those performed after exercise, and the criterion of a low maximal heart rate doses not imply an underestimation of the perfusion abnormalities observed at exercise. (authors)