A COMPARISON OF FUNCTIONAL AND ANATOMICAL INVESTIGATIONS WITH ANGINA SYMPTOMS: RESULTS FROM A RANDOMISED CONTROLLED TRIAL

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.