Prognostic impact of stress myocardial perfusion imaging in women

Despite the limitations of some noninvasive testing procedures for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease in women, a normal stress myocardial perfusion study appears to predict an excellent prognosis with a low cardiac event rate. Although cardiovascular medical services are still not used as aggressively in women as in men, noninvasive stress studies in women can be used to reveal the presence, severity, and extent of stress-induced myocardial perfusion defects, and thereby, to predict the risk of serious future cardiac events. Future investigations should be directed toward defining the incremental value of nuclear imaging over existing technologies. Technetium-99m myocardial perfusion agents appear to provide the high-quality images with reduced soft-tissue attenuation needed to accurately predict cardiac events in women. Prognostic information obtained by myocardial perfusion studies can be used to predict outcomes and to plan therapy that may forestall or prevent these cardiac events.