BACKGROUND: Patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention may present progression of coronary artery disease in the late follow-up, leading to the development of new lesions in different sites of the coronary arteries, which may represent a diagnostic challenge. The goal of this paper was to evaluate the contribution of multislice computed tomography in this setting. METHOD: From July 2007 to July 2008 we analyzed 60 patients with suspect late myocardial ischemia after coronary stent implantation. Patients were divided in two groups. In Group I, 30 patients were evaluated by multislice computed tomography and in Group II, 30 patients were evaluated by myocardial scintigraphy. All patients were subsequently submitted to coronary angiography. RESULTS: Demographic data, the treated vessel and the mean number of stents per patient were not significantly different in both groups. Multislice computed tomography identified progression of coronary disease in 9 patients (30%) and restenosis in 2 (6.7%); myocardial scintigraphy identified 8 cases (26.7%) of disease progression and 3 cases (10%) of restenosis. Coronary angiography revealed 10 cases of disease progression (3 cases with obstructions between 55% and 60%) in Group I and 12 in Group II (4 patients with obstructions between 50% and 60%) and confirmed all suspected restenosis. CONCLUSION: Multislice computed tomography proved to be sensitive to detect progression of coronary artery disease in patients previously treated with stent implantation. Should larger scale studies confirm such findings this method could have an important role in the clinical evaluation of these patients.
Tomography, spiral computed; Coronary artery disease; Stents; Radionuclide imaging
