B Flow Assessment of Femoral Artery as an Indicator for the Presence of Coronary Artery Disease in Individuals Undergoing Radionuclide Myocardial Perfusion Scintigraphy for the Evaluation of Chest Pain

This study highlights about B flow assessment of femoral artery as an indicator for the presence of coronary artery disease in individuals undergoing radionuclide myocardial perfusion scintigraphy for the evaluation of chest pain. In the evaluation of patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD), the presence of the superficial femoral artery (SFA) plaque is more informative than a carotid plaque and at least as informative as coronary plaque in the identification of coronary death individuals. A total of 60 emergency room consecutive patients aged 59.2 ± 8.1 years that have been referred to our ambulatory of internal medicine for chest pain evaluation suggestive of ischemic heart disease with a normal or nondiagnostic electrocardiogram were included in the study. We found significant positive correlations between age and SFA plaque score (PS) (P = 0.0084), myocardial ischemia in rest and SFA PS (P <0.0001), and between transient ischemic dilation (TID) and SFA PS (P = 0.0069), too. The TID correlates only with myocardial ischemia in rest (P = 0.0022) and SFA PS (P = 0.0069). The results we got by the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis with TID/without TID were the area under curve (0.704, P = 0.0038). The multiple regression analysis showed standardized coefficient b coefficients for SFA PS and TID (3.4577 and 1.9903, P < 0.001 and P = 0.0021), respectively. Proven correlative relationship of SFA atherosclerotic plaques and CAD using these two noninvasive methods gives us the ability to use B-flow as a screening method for triage of patients with chest pain before being sent to the assessment of coronary circulation with radionuclide MPS.