Temporal trends of stress myocardial perfusion imaging: Influence of diabetes, gender and coronary artery disease status

IntroductionTemporal trends of myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) among diabetics and non-diabetics and the influence of gender and prior coronary artery disease (CAD) status has not been previously investigated.Materials and methodsConsecutive patients who underwent clinically indicated stress-MPI over a 17-year period (1996 through 2012) were studied. Data were collected prospectively as a part of the ongoing clinical databases. Study patients were divided into 4 temporal subgroups (1996 to 2000, 2001 to 2004, 2005 to 2008 and 2009 to 2012) to compare the trends of cardiac risk factors and the frequency of abnormal and ischemic MPI.ResultsOf 78,344 total stress MPI studies, 30.2% were in diabetics. The frequency of abnormal MPI studies, while substantially higher in diabetics, significantly declined over time both in diabetics (53.6% in 1996 to 39.8% in 2012) and non-diabetics (37% in 1996 to 27.4% in 2012), despite an increase in the cardiac risk factor profile. Furthermore, among patients with no known CAD, the temporal prevalence of abnormal MPI was highest in diabetic men (57.5% in 1996 to 31.9% in 2012), lowest in non-diabetic women (18.8% in 1996 to 11% in 2012), and both intermediate and comparable in non-diabetic men and diabetic women (36.4% and 35.7% in 1996 and 20.7% and 17.5% in 2012, respectively).ConclusionsDespite a temporal reduction in the prevalence of abnormal studies from 1996 through 2012, stress MPI continues to play an important clinical role, particularly in diabetics, men and patients with known-CAD.