Application of body surface potential mapping in coronary artery disease diagnosis

Body surface potential mapping (BSPM) is essentially recommended for detecting and evaluating abnormalities of cardiac electric field specific for various stages of ischemic state of myocardium caused by coronary artery disease (CAD). In this regard, a goal of the present paper was to summarize the BSPM results, which were gathered in our laboratory for several years from the patients with CAD.

In a group of 110 patients (mean age: 48.4+/-6.2 years) with angiographically documented critical single-vessel (SVD) coronary artery disease among them 52 patients with left anterior descending artery (LAD) involvement, 40 patients with right coronary artery (RCA) and 18 patients with left circumflex artery (Cx) lesions, without any specific ischemic changes on standard resting 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG), isointegral and departure ST-T maps were recorded using Fukuda Denshi (Tokyo, Japan) 87-electrode system for BSPM.

Significant decrease of the minimum values of ST-T maps was found only in patients with LAD involvement. Typical distribution of the negative potential was found on ST-T map for each of LAD, RCA and Cx stenosis. Overall sensitivity of abnormal distribution of ST-T maps was 55.5% for the SVD group. In 21/96 of the SVD patients in whom exercise test was performed, the result was negative. Generally, in 12 of these 21 patients, the abnormal ST-T maps were observed (57.1%). The RCA lesion group had abnormal ST-T maps in 75% of the patients with negative exercise test. The corresponding ratios were 71.4% for LAD, and only 16.7% for Cx patients.

ST-T resting maps are of some value in diagnosing stable ischemic heart disease.