Is Coronary CT angiogram more reliable than invasive coronary angiogram to diagnose heart disease?
It’s a little weird that the person claiming to be a doctor seems to be answering a completely different question than the one you asked, Badius, but I will try to clear things up. Loving_Heart’s answer is in reference to bile duct disease and not coronary disease. It’s hard for anyone to say that coronary CT angiogram is “better” or “more reliable” than traditional coronary angiography because the studies that have been published almost universally use traditional coronary angiography as the “gold standard”. The accuracy of coronary CT is therefore usually given in reference to coronary angiography. The studies that have been published suggest that 64-slice CT has a sensitivity of 93-100%, specificity of 90-95%, and positive and negative predictive values of 75-85% and 95-100%, respectively, for detecting significant coronary stenoses. In other words, CT angiography is a pretty good test and will probably get better. Right now, it is a little better at telling us who DOESN’T have coro
