Affiliation

• ¹Ulster Hospital, South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, Upper Newtownards Road, Dundonald, Belfast BT16 1RH, UK
• ²Centre for Experimental Medicine, Queen’s University Belfast, Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7BL, UK
• ³The Northern Ireland Clinical Trials Unit, Education and Research Centre, Royal Hospitals, Belfast BT12 6BA, UK

Corresponding Author

McKavanagh, P. M.B., M Med Sc, Ulster Hospital, South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, Upper Newtownards Road, Dundonald, Belfast BT16 1RH, UK, E-mail: mckavanagh@doctors.org.uk

Citation

McKavanagh, P., et al. A Comparison of Functional and Anatomical Investigations with Angina Symptoms: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial. (2016) J Heart Cardiol 2(1): 39-45.

Copy rights

© 2016 McKavanagh, P. This is an Open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keywords

Abstract

  The presence of angina is a potential source of reduced quality of life and may be a predictor of adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Recent guidelines suggest that management of angina should revolve around the use of the Diamond Forrester (DF) score to determine which tests should be used for an individual patient. The choice of test can be broadly categorized into anatomical or function. Little is known about how either type of test correlates with the DF score. This study was part of a larger randomized Controlled Trial to compare the use of cardiac Computerized Tomography (CT) and exercise Electrocardiogram Stress Test (EST) in patients with stable angina. This analysis compared the results from EST and CT against the DF scores. Overall all results showed that there is a poor correlation between DF and both tests. R-squared value from the linear model showed correlation between EST and DF scores to be 0.315, with the correlation between CT and DF scores 0.415. This calls into question the useful of symptoms to drive investigations.