Does stress functional MRI improve the detection of ischemic heart disease and myocardial viability compared to stress echocardiography in patients with chest pain or impaired LV function?
Stress functional MRI with dobutamine is a practical and accurate tool for detecting ischemic heart disease and assessing myocardial viability, particularly when echocardiographic imaging is suboptimal.
Breath-hold gradient-echo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in conjunction with pharmacologic dobutamine stress has become a practical tool to investigate patients with chest pain. The presence of high-grade coronary artery stenoses can be detected more accurately than with stress echocardiography. The main diagnostic advantage of MRI is in patients with suboptimal echocardiographic image quality. Depiction of left ventricular anatomy and function at rest and during low-dose dobutamine stress is also clinically useful for evaluating patients with severely impaired left ventricular function for the presence of residual myocardial viability. Recovery of regional and global left ventricular function can be accurately predicted by stress functional MRI. J. Magn. Reson Imaging 1999;10:667-675, 1999.
Sechtem et al. (Mon,) studied this question.