[Experiences with coronarography using digital technics]

The authors report their experience with the application of digital techniques to coronary angiography, over the past 2 years. One hundred and fifty coronary angiographies were performed, with excellent results. Indications for surgical by-pass arose for 64 patients, 35 of whom have already undergone surgery. Coronary angioplasty procedures (PTCA) were needed in 13 cases; on 12 the procedure has already been carried out. The difficulty to provide the cardiac surgeon with images in movement has been overcome by recording the images passing on the TV monitor directly on a professional magnetic tape. On the basis of our initial experience, we may affirm that the application of digital techniques to coronary angiography does not modify the technical approach to the exam and, therefore, does not reduce its invasiveness. On the other hand, the examination can be performed using the software commonly found in many units used for digital angiography. From a morphological point of view, the images seem to be superimposable to the conventional ones, especially since sequences of 25 images/second can be acquired with a 512 matrix. The potentials of digital techniques to provide functional data and information on anatomic lesions are very interesting, even though they are still to be fully demonstrated.