Positron emission tomography in paediatric cardiology

Abstract

There are three types of cardiac PET study: regional blood flow (which can be measured at rest and during pharmacological induced stress), substrate metabolism, and chemical recognition (including receptors and enzymes).2 Currently, the main clinical application of PET is in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease, in terms of the differentiation between infarcted and “stunned” myocardial tissue, in which complete recovery of severely ischaemic and non-contracting myocardium is possible after reperfusion.3 4 Other methods for differentiating recoverable myocardium from non-viable tissue, such as the presence of ECG Q waves, wall motion abnormalities on ultrasound, gated isotope scans, or fixed thallium-201 perfusion defects,5 all seriously underestimate viable myocardium even with delayed imaging or reinjection techniques in the last.5