RESUMO
The clinical utility of thallium-201 SPECT combined dwith pharmacologic vasodilation induced by oral dipyridamole as an alternatiove to intravenous dipyridamole was incestigated in 21 patients who had concomitant coronary arteriography. Tomographic images were assessed visually. Sensitivity & specificity for overall detection of coronary artery disease were 93.7% and 80% respectively. Sensitivity & specificity for identification of indevidual diseased vessels were 84.6% and 87.5% for the left anterior descending artery, 75% and 84.6% for the right coronary artery, 60% and 100% for the left circumflex artery, respecitively. Of the 26 patients unergoing thallium scintigraphy 11 patients(42.3%) had some adverse effects between 20 and 50 minutes after oral dipyrdamole ingestion, including headache(26.9%), chest pain(26.9%), electrocardiographic changes(19.2%), and nausea(11.5%). Intravenous aminophylline was used to resolve these adverse effects in 8 patients & most of the adverse effects were subsided within 10 minutes. There was no ventricular arrhythmias, myocardial infarctions or deaths. In conclusion, oral dipyridamole thallium-201 SPECT is safe and accurate test for the overall detection of coranary artery disease and identification of disease in individual arteries. Furthermore it is useful for determining the necessities of coronary reperfusion and prognstically stratiofying the patients with coronary artery disease.