Systolic reconstruction in patients with low heart rate using coronary dual-source CT angiography

ObjectivesThe purpose of our study was to determine the relationship between the predictive factors and systolic reconstruction (SR) as an optimal reconstruction window in patients with low heart rate (LHR; less than 65 bpm).Methods391 patients (262 male and 129 female, mean age; 67.1 ± 10.1 years of age) underwent coronary CTA without the additional administration of a beta-blocker. Affecting factors for SR were analyzed in age, gender, body weight (BW), diabetes mellitus (DM), coronary arterial disease (CAD), ejection fraction (EF), systolic and diastolic body pressure (BP) and heart rate variability (HRV) during coronary CTA.ResultsIn 29 (7.4%) of the 391 patients, SR was needed, but there was no apparent characteristic difference between the systolic and diastolic reconstruction groups in terms of gender, age, BW, DM, CAD and EF. In a multivariate analysis, the co-existence of DM [P < 0.05; OR, 0.27; 95% CI, 0.092–0.80], diastolic BP [P < 0.01; OR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.92–0.98] and HRV [P < 0.01; OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.96–0.99] were found to be the factors for SR. In gender-related analysis, HRV was an important factor regardless of sex, but co-existence of DM affected especially for female and BP for male.ConclusionEspecially in the patients with LHR who had a medication of DM, high HRV or high BP, SR, in addition to DR, was needed to obtain high-quality coronary CTA images.