Comparison of adenosine and exercise stress 201Tl myocardial perfusion imaging for diagnosing coronary heart disease in women

Objective: To compare the diagnostic value of adenosine and exercise stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) for detecting coronary heart disease (CHD) in women. Methods: One hundred and thirty-eight patients with CHD were randomly divided into two groups: adenosine stress group (n=69)and exercise stress group (n=69). All patients underwent myocardial SPECT evaluation. Coronary angiography (CAG), referred as 'gold standard' , was performed in each patient within 1 week before or after MPI. The diagnostic value of the two stress MPI was compared with χ2 test or Fisher's exact test. Results: In adenosine stress group, the sensitivity, negative predictive value and accuracy were 88.2% (45/51), 72.7% (16/22), 88.4% (61/69), respectively, which were not significantly different from those of the exercise stress group (91.7% (44/48), 66.7% (8/12), 81.2% (52/64); χ2 =0.571, 0.714, 0.249, P>0.05). However, the false positive rate of adenosine stress (11.1%, 2/18) was significantly lower than that of exercise stress (50.0%, 8/16), P=0.023. Conclusions: Adenosine and exercise stress MPI have similar value for CHD diagnosis in women, however, adenosine stress MPI may have an advantage of low false positive rate. (authors)