The Science Is as Clear as the Stakes

Coronary artery disease doesn't always show up as a blockage. For millions of patients, the problem is in the small vessels: coronary microvascular disease.

Through myocardial blood flow imaging, cardiac PET measures how well blood flows through both the large and small vessels of the heart, giving physicians a complete picture that exercise stress tests, echocardiograms, and traditional nuclear stress imaging (i.e. “SPECT” imaging) cannot provide. It also uses significantly less radiation than standard nuclear imaging (approximately 3–4 mSv compared to 7–15 mSv with SPECT), making it a safer option.

Four in ten patients undergoing elective coronary angiography for ischemic symptoms have no obstructive blockage at all. Many of them have coronary microvascular disease, present in up to two-thirds of patients with ischemia and no obstructive coronary artery disease. PET is considered the gold standard non-invasive test for diagnosing coronary microvascular disease.

The evidence supporting cardiac PET speaks to clinical quality and healthcare efficiency in equal measure.

Patients managed with cardiac PET undergo more than 50% fewer invasive coronary procedures, reducing total heart disease management costs by approximately 30% with no increase in cardiac death or heart attack at one year.¹ That reduction is directly tied to the reliability of a negative result. A negative cardiac PET scan is significantly more trustworthy than a negative SPECT result, meaning physicians can confidently rule out serious disease rather than ordering additional tests or referring patients for catheterizations that carry both clinical risk and substantial cost to Medicare.

Standard imaging tests miss 81% of high-risk cases that cardiac PET identifies.² When those cases go undetected, patients cycle through repeated testing, unnecessary procedures, and preventable hospitalizations, all of which cost Medicare more than an accurate diagnosis at the front end.

The downstream math is straightforward: better diagnostics reduce expensive interventions, making cardiac PET both the right clinical decision as well as the more fiscally responsible one.

Cardiac PET closes diagnostic gaps that have persisted for decades. Explore how it uniquely benefits patients who have historically been underserved by standard imaging.

The American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, the European Society of Cardiology, and the American Society for Nuclear Cardiology recommend Cardiac PET—often in preference to SPECT—for evaluation of suspected coronary artery disease, assessment for coronary microvascular disease, and to identify patients at high risk for adverse cardiovascular events.