OBJECTIVE Increased red blood cell distribution width (RDW) is associated with severity of coronary artery disease (CAD). The aim of the present study was to retrospectively evaluate the relationship between CAD detected by coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) and RDW. METHODS Records of 291 patients who underwent 16-slice CCTA due to the presence of angina-like chest pain were ret...

HIGHLIGHTS In swine with and without diabetes mellitus fed a fast-food diet: OCT, NIRS, CCTA, vascular function testing, and histology can be consecutively and longitudinally performed to assess gradual coronary atherosclerosis development OCT and NIRS enabled detailed assessment of early coronary atherosclerosis development, whereas CCTA was not able to detect discrete early atherosclerotic ch...

Objective To investigate the morphological changes of coronary chronic total occlusion (CTO) as determined by coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) follow-up using semi-automated quantitative analysis. Materials and Methods Thirty patients with 31 CTO lesions confirmed by invasive coronary angiography and baseline/follow-up CCTA were retrospectively included. CTOs were quantitativel...

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to assess trends in utilization and Medicare coverage of cardiac CT and coronary CT angiography (CCTA). METHODS Medicare claims for cardiac CT and CCTA were identified for the first 3 complete years for which Current Procedural Terminology(®) tracking codes existed (2006-2008). The frequencies of billed and denied services were extracted on national and regio...

This study was conducted to investigate the feasibility of using 3D virtual intravascular endoscopy (VIE) as a novel approach for characterization of calcified coronary plaques with the aim of differentiating superficial from deep calcified plaques, thus improving assessment of coronary stenosis.A total of 61 patients with suspected coronary artery disease were included in the study. Minimal lu...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to compare the efficiency, cost, and safety of a diagnostic strategy employing early coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) to a strategy employing rest-stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) in the evaluation of acute low-risk chest pain. BACKGROUND In the United States, >8 million patients require emergency department evaluation for acut...

We evaluated the prevalence, image appearance, associated cardiovascular anomalies, and surgical outcomes of left pulmonary artery sling (LPAS) using cardiovascular computed tomography angiography (CCTA). A retrospective search of patients from our database between October 2007 and December 2014 identified 52,200 patients with congenital heart diseases (CHD) referred for CCTA, echocardiography,...

Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Many trials to date have investigated the diagnostic accuracy of coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) when compared to the gold standard diagnostic test, invasive coronary angiography. However, whether the use of a non-invasive anatomical test, such as CCTA, can translate into improved patient risk stratification, manag...

Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is a promising alternative technique to detect significant coronary artery lesions in high-risk cardiovascular patients with left ventricular dysfunction (left ventricular ejection fractions < 40%) referred for elective valve surgery, while little research about the use of CCTA to detect the outcomes of heart valve surgery was performed. Forty-six...

Aims The aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic performance of single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), stress echocardiography (SE), invasive coronary angiography (ICA), coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA), fractional flow reserve (FFR) derived from CCTA (FFRCT), and cardiac magnetic resonance (MRI) imaging when directly compared with an FFR reference standard...