Prevalence and impact of scan-related anxiety during coronary CT angiography: A prospective cohort study of 366 patients.

BACKGROUND

Scanxiety, the anxiety/stress associated with an imaging test, has never been evaluated in relation to coronary CT angiography (Coronary CTA). As it could impact heart rate and thereby affect image quality of Coronary CTA, we aimed to evaluate the prevalence, severity, and impact of scanxiety on quality and interpretability of Coronary CTA.

METHODS

366 consecutive patients were prospectively presented with a clinical questionnaire comprising two tests to evaluate their scan-related anxiety: the Impact of Event IES-6 (6 questions, final score 0-24) and a visual stress-scale (1 question, score 1-10). Patient demographics, heart rate and final image quality scored by two readers were recorded. Potential independent correlations were sought between IES-6 scanxiety level and image quality, heart rate variability and demographics, using an ordinal logistic regression model.

RESULTS

344 patients (59.9% men, 57.6 ± 10.7yo) completed the questionnaire. 74.1% (255 patients) reported some scan-related distress, with a mean IES-6 score of 4.1 ± 4.3 (range 0-18). There was no significant difference in terms of age, sex or indications for Coronary CTA between the non-anxious (IES-6 = 0) and the anxious (IES-6>0) patients. There was no significant independent correlation between image quality and IES-6 score (OR = 0.98, p = 0.62), nor between IES-6 score and heart rate variability (effect = -0.005, p = 0.97).

CONCLUSION

The prevalence of scan-related anxiety - aka scanxiety - in Coronary CTA patients is high (74.1%) but does not appear to impact image quality and interpretability.