Value of additional myocardial perfusion imaging during dobutamine stress magnetic resonance for the assessment of intermediate coronary artery disease

This study was performed to assess the role of additional myocardial perfusion imaging during high dose dobutamine/atropine stress magnetic resonance (DSMR-wall motion) for the evaluation of patients with intermediate (50–70%) coronary artery stenosis. Routine DSMR-wall motion was combined with perfusion imaging (DSMR-perfusion) in 174 consecutive patients with chest pain syndromes who were scheduled for a clinically indicated coronary angiography. When defining CAD as the presence of a ≥ 50% stenosis, the addition of perfusion imaging improved sensitivity (90 vs. 79%, P < 0.001) with a non-significant reduction in specificity (85 vs. 90%, P = 0.13) and an improvement in overall diagnostic accuracy (88 vs. 84%, P = 0.008). Adding perfusion imaging improved sensitivity in patients with intermediate stenosis (87 vs. 72%, P = 0.03), but not in patients with severe (≥70%) stenosis (93 vs. 84%, P = 0.06). In patients with severe stenosis specificity of DSMR-perfusion versus DSMR-wall motion decreased (61 vs 70%, P = 0.001) resulting in a lower overall accuracy (71 vs 74%, P = 0.03). Using a cutoff of ≥50% for the definition of CAD, sensitivity of DSMR-perfusion compared to DSMR-wall motion was significantly higher in patients with single vessel (88 vs. 77%, P = 0.03) and multi vessel disease (93 vs. 79%, P = 0.03), whereas no significant differences were found using a cutoff of ≥70% stenosis for the definition of CAD. The addition of perfusion imaging during DSMR-wall motion improved the sensitivity in patients with intermediate coronary artery stenosis. Overall diagnostic accuracy increased only when defining CAD as ≥50% stenosis. In patients with ≥70% stenosis DSMR-wall motion alone had higher accuracy due to more false-positive cases with DSMR-perfusion.