Substantial decrease in use of cardiac imaging procedure found by study
Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - 14:02
in Health & Medicine
There has been a sharp decline since 2006 in the use of nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI; an imaging procedure used to determine areas of the heart with decreased blood flow), a decrease that cannot be explained by an increase in other imaging methods, according to a study. "Although the abrupt nature of the decline suggests changing physician behavior played a major role, incident coronary disease, as assessed by [heart attack], also declined [by 27 percent]. We could not determine the relative effects of these factors on MPI use," the authors write.