ORLANDO, FL - In those challenging cases in which a patient presents to the emergency department with chest pain but doesn't appear to have markers of a heart attack, researchers suggest that performing coronary CT angiography (CTA) might be a faster -- and less expensive -- solution than workups based on the current standard of care.  

A new computer-aided-detection (CAD) application is showing great promise as a companion to coronary CT angiography, recording both high sensitivity and low numbers of false-positive marks, according to researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina.  

ORLANDO, FL - To the surprise of investigators, CT scans of mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo show that these ancient Egyptians had signs of atherosclerosis in their hearts and arteries.  

ORLANDO, FL - Heart screening isn't just for athletes anymore. Researchers at this week's American Heart Association meeting said that screening all middle-school-aged children for cardiac abnormalities with a targeted medical history, physical exam, electrocardiogram (ECG), and echocardiograph can identify those at risk of heart problems before they head out for recess.  

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters), Nov 17 - The battery of tests given to a patient having a heart attack in a U.S. hospital adds up to a dose of radiation equivalent to 725 chest x-rays, researchers reported on Monday.  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Nov 17 - Patients with normal stress myocardial perfusion imaging on single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) do not need additional rest imaging, say researchers from The Methodist Hospital in Houston.  

ORLANDO, FL - Screening the hearts of top student athletes takes more than just an electrocardiogram (ECG), researchers said on Sunday at the American Heart Association's annual conference: Ultrasound is key to finding more athletes at risk.  

A new method of segmenting the fetal heart with echocardiography could improve the evaluation of congenital heart defects compared to the time-consuming manual segmentation in use today, according to researchers from the U.K.  

Cardiac imaging is scheduled for reimbursement cuts -- including a 36% hack at SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) -- under the final Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2010. On the plus side, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) also published base rates for coronary CT angiography (CCTA) and increased cardiac PET reimbursement by about 17%.  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Nov 3 - New research suggests that coronary artery calcium score and SPECT provide complimentary information in predicting a person's short- and long-term risk of cardiac events.  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Nov 2 - Unlike exercise electrocardiography (XECG), CT angiography is "nearly always" feasible and diagnostic in patients with stable chest complaints, researchers say in the October issue of the journal Heart.  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Oct 30 - Carotid intima-media thickness predicts the presence and severity of coronary artery disease in asymptomatic patients with diabetes, according to a Dutch study reported in the October 15 American Journal of Cardiology.  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Oct 23 - In patients with type 2 diabetes, coronary CT angiography identifies occult coronary artery disease that's missed by SPECT, according to an article in the October 1 American Journal of Cardiology.  

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) can allow for reliable quantification of the neovascularization of the carotid artery vasa vasorum, enabling early identification of a condition that can be a precursor to atherosclerosis, according to a presentation at this week's Advances in Contrast Ultrasound: ICUS Bubble Conference in Chicago.  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Oct 19 - Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) is a key predictor of cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in patients with type 2 diabetes, researchers from Turkey report in the September Journal of Diabetes.  

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Oct 16 - Pericardial fat independently predicts a higher risk for incident coronary heart disease, according to findings published in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In the study, baseline cardiac CT was used to determine the volume of pericardial fat.