Improvement of diagnostic accuracy of Transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (TTR-CA) with 99mTechnetium pyrophosphate SPECT imaging

Conclusions: SPECT imaging can improve the diagnostic accuracy of planar scans. Blood pool increases visual score and heart-to-contralateral ratio on planar images. This could be responsible for a large portion (36%) of questionable visual scores and result in possible false positives (4%). Future studies should investigate the ability of delayed imaging to clear blood pool in these cases. Another 36% of questionable visual scores showed presence of PYP on SPECT not evident on planar, which may implicate expanded use of PYP imaging. Focal uptake of PYP can represent prior myocardial damage, which SPECT can better identify. TTR-CA apical sparing shown in echocardiography3 was not confirmed in this study.
Source: Journal of Nuclear Medicine - Category: Nuclear Medicine Authors: Tags: Hermann Blumgart Award Lecture Source Type: research