Proposal for Evaluating the use of Coronary Computed Tomographic Angiography within an Asymptomatic Population for Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease

Abstract

Research within medicine is commonly being directed towards discovering or modifying techniques used to detect disease. Common obstacles with the present diagnostic screening procedures is that they can be categorized as “invasive” for the patient and can also be costly for both the patient and the healthcare provider. A non-invasive procedure known as coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) is a relatively new procedural candidate for diagnosis of coronary atherosclerotic disease, or CAD (Husmann et al., 2008). With regard to detection of clinically significant coronary artery disease, contrast-enhanced coronary computed tomographic angiography has high sensitivity and specificity as compared to invasive coronary angiography (Hoffmann et al., 2012). Coronary CT angiograms do not carry as many risks as the “gold standard” angiogram, making coronary CT angiograms an attractive alternative (Hoffmann et al., 2006). Therefore, I developed a protocol to assess CCTA’s efficiency in diagnosing asymptomatic CAD, in collaboration with the participating members in the study. The protocol was submitted for IRB approval and anticipated data collection start date is presumed to begin in January 2014.