Exercise stress myocardial perfusion scintigraphy with thallium-201

We performed exercise stress scintigraphy with thallium-201 in 88 patients including 31 patients of effort angina and nine patients of old myocardial infarction without angina. Sensitivity of exercise stress scintigraphy to detect effort angina was 77%, whereas sensitivity of exercise stress ECG was only 44.5%. The combination of stress scintigraphy with stress ECG enhanced sensitivity up to 87%. Exercise stress scintigraphy was useful particularly in cases with one vessel disease and those who failed to achieve sufficient exercise stress. Besides exercise stress scintigraphy did not show false positive response, differing from exercise stress ECG. Myocardial imaging is a method which shows the balance between myocardial perfusion demand and supply.