CT angiography: front line for acute coronary syndromes now?

摘要

Since coronary artery disease (CAD) is the major underlying cause of acute coronary syndrome (ACS), state of the art cardiac CT angiography (CTA), a non-invasive method that quickly and accurately determines the presence and extent of CAD, could substantially improve the early and accurate triage of patients with chest pain. A number of feasibility studies have demonstrated that the strength of cardiac CTA is its high negative predictive value (NPV), suggesting that the presence of hacmodynamically significant CAD can be reliably ruled out.