CARDIAC PET

For years, SPECT has been the gold standard for evaluating blood flow through the heart. Now, however, more and more cardiologists are turning to cardiac PET to diagnose heart disease. Approved in 1995 as a first-line test in symptomatic patients, PET has since become the premier technology for nuclear cardiology.

Benefits of Cardiac PET versus SPECT

Cardiac PET offers numerous benefits and advantages including:

• Greater sensitivity and specificity
• Better image resolution and quality
• Ability to quantify reduced myocardial blood flow in all three vascular regions enables earlier detection of coronary artery disease (CAD)
• Higher diagnostic accuracy for detecting single or multi-vessel CAD and coronary microvascular disease (MVD) (patient motion is minimized, soft tissue attenuation is corrected, and there are fewer artifacts)
• Rapid turnaround of exam and results (takes less than one hour to perform cardiac PET as compared to four hours for SPECT)
• Can accommodate ill, high-risk, and larger patients
• Exposes the patient to significantly less radiation
• Better at detecting viable heart tissue through the assessment of myocardial glucose utilization, which cannot be performed with SPECT
• Reduces the number of equivocal studies that go on to require a heart catheterization

In terms of clinical accuracy:

• PET offers higher sensitivity compared to SPECT (93% vs. 76%). Source: Go et al JNM 1990, 31: 1899-905.
• Higher specificity compared to SPECT (83% vs. 53%). Source: Stewart et al AJ Cardiol 1991; 67:1303-10.
• Compared accuracy of 82Rb PET and 99mTc MIBI compared to coronary angiography in two patient populations with similar clinical profiles.
• PET showed higher diagnostic accuracy (89% vs. 79%) using 70% anglographic stenosis as threshold for CAD.
• PET was more sensitive for correctly diagnosing multi-vessel CAD (71% vs. 48%).

Determining If Cardiac PET Is Right for Your Practice

Cardio Health Solutions’ (CHS) development team can review your imaging referral and diagnosis code history. A detailed review of reimbursement will provide information specific to your market and carriers that service your patients.

If we determine that your group can support cardiac PET, CHS will provide the capital and management to ensure your group takes on the least amount of financial risk while reserving capital for other projects. Since CHS owns the equipment, there are no guarantees required from the group’s partners.

CHS will develop and supplement a plan to meet licensure, legal, and compliance regulations, ensure build out is executed, and purchase and install equipment. CHS handles staffing, training, billing, and education/marketing services to all clinical personnel.

For more information or to get started on adding cardiac PET to your practice, call Cardio Health Solutions at (800) 578-0654 or complete our online contact form and we will respond to you promptly.