Cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) perfusion with flow quantification is the latest advancement in nuclear stress testing and is used to examine how well blood flows to the heart muscle. RUSH is the first and only hospital in Illinois to offer this technology.

Dr. Rupa Sanghani, a cardiologist in the RUSH University System for Health, discusses the ways RUSH incorporates cardiac PET perfusion in its complement of cardiac diagnostics and care, the benefits of using it and when cardiac PET should be implemented. Dr. Sanghani is the director of RUSH University Medical Center’s nuclear cardiology and stress laboratory and the associate director for the RUSH Heart Center for Women. Her clinical expertise is in cardiac imaging, cardiovascular risk assessment and counseling, coronary artery disease and with women who either have heart disease or are at risk for it.

“It's a huge boon to offer our patients and referring physicians cardiac PET perfusion. We can use information from it to provide patients with a comprehensive risk assessment for their cardiac health. Flow and flow reserve is what people are most excited about with PET. The advantage to cardiac PET is that we’re not just looking at relative perfusion, but we can actually quantitate the myocardial blood flow.”

CME credit link: https://cmetracker.net/RUSH/Publisher?page=pubOpen#/EventID/483393