[Clinical value of body surface mapping in the diagnosis of ischemic heart disease]

A series of 137 patients suffered in clinically documented angina pectoris were analyzed by 12-lead exercise ECG, exercise body surface potential mapping and exercise thallium scintigraphic methods and the results were compared to that of selective coronary angiography and left ventriculography. If coronary artery stenosis were considered to be significant in the presence of more than 70% vessel narrowing, the sensitivity figures were 76, 93 and 88% for exercise 12-lead ECG, exercise body surface potential mapping and exercise thallium scintigraphy, respectively. In considering 50% coronary artery narrowing to be significant, the same figures were 78, 94 and 89%. Specificity figures at the same order were 59, 65 and 80% for more than 70%, and 64, 70 and 88% for more than 50% coronary obstructions. Exercise body surface potential mapping and exercise thallium scintigraphy applied parallelly gave a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 53%. False-negative and false-positive exercise body surface potential mapping and thallium scintigraphic tests were analysed taking into consideration left ventricular function indices and respective patients. The authors suggest that the outstanding high sensitivity of the above mentioned two tests applied parallelly reveals that they highlights partially different aspects of coronary artery disease, and that is why the overlapping between the methods is relatively small. The majority of false-positive tests characterize a pathological state, and in these cases the exact diagnosis should be cleared up by other noninvasive/invasive methods.