Value of radionuclide-determined changes in pulmonary blood volume for the detection of coronary artery disease.

We employed gated equilibrium radionuclide angiography to measure the ratio of pulmonary blood volume at exercise to PBV at rest. We compared this ratio to more commonly utilized ejection fraction measurements in the detection of coronary artery disease. Sensitivity was assessed in 28 patients with angiographically-proven coronary artery disease. Specificity was assessed in 25 patients with a low likelihood of coronary artery disease on the basis of Bayes' theorem. Receiver operator characteristic curves demonstrated that the peak exercise ejection was clearly superior to the PBV ratio in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. The PBV ratio appears to be less useful for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease than the peak exercise ejection fraction.