Lowering of Heart Rate before Computed Tomographic Coronary Angiography: Improvement in Image Quality and Role of Ivabradine

Abstract

Heart rate during coronary computed tomographic angiography (coronary CTA) has a direct correlation with image quality and detection of coronary artery disease. Beta blocking agents are the most commonly used drugs to lower the heart rate, but their use is limited due to adverse effects and contraindications. Ivabradine (IVA) is a novel drug that selectively acts on cardiac pacemaker cells and lowers heart rate. This brief review article emphasizes the importance of slow heart rate for coronary CTA image quality and pre-treatment with IVA as a negative chronotropic agent. We compared the role of other drugs used for this purpose. Keywords -Ivabradine, Coronary CT angiography, Hear rateCite this article as: Javed AA, Hamid MS and Khan MH. Lowering of heart rate before computed tomographic coronary angiography: improvement in image quality and role of ivabradine. JCvD 2015;3(2): 325-329.

Image Quality and Dose Reduction by Dual Source Computed Tomography Coronary Angiography: Protocol Comparison

“…Moreover, in order to have an adequate image quality, these low-dose acquisition methods require a low and stable heart rate (HR), which is not always possible to obtain in all patients. [8][9][10][11] The purpose of this study was to compare image quality and radiation dose using different CTCA scan protocols with a second-generation dual source CT (DSCT) scanner in order to define the parameters for an efficient fine-tuning of a CTCA examination.…”