¹⁸ F-NaF PET uptake characteristics of coronary artery culprit lesions in a cohort of patients of acute coronary syndrome with ST-elevation myocardial infarction and chronic stable angina: A hybrid fluoride PET/CTCA study

Background: ¹⁸F-NaF PET/CT identifies high-risk plaques due to active calcification in coronary arteries with potential to characterize plaques in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (MI) and chronic stable angina (CSA) patients.

Methods: Twenty-four MI and 17 CSA patients were evaluated with ¹⁸F-NaF PET/CTCA for SUV_max and TBR values of culprit and non-culprit plaques in both groups (inter-group and intra-group comparison), and pre- and post-interventional MI plaques sub-analysis.

Results: Culprit plaques in MI patients had significantly higher SUV_max (1.6; IQR 0.6 vs 1.3; IQR 0.3, P = 0.03) and TBR (1.4; IQR 0.6 vs 1.1; IQR 0.4, P = 0.006) than culprit plaques of CSA. Pre-interventional culprit plaques of MI group (n = 11) revealed higher SUV_max (P = 0.007) and TBR (P = 0.008) values than culprit CSA plaques. Culprit plaques showed significantly higher SUV_max (P = 0.006) and TBR (P = 0.0003) than non-culprit plaques in MI group, but without significant difference between culprit and non-culprit plaques in CSA group. With median TBR cutoff value of 1.4 in MI culprit plaques, 6/7 plaques (85.7%) among the event prone non-culprit lesions had TBR values > 1.4 in CSA group.

Conclusion: The study shows higher SUV_max and TBR values in MI culprit plaques and comparable TBR values for event prone plaques of CSA group in identifying high-risk plaques.

Keywords: 18F-NaF; PET/CTCA, plaques; chronic stable angina; culprit plaque; myocardial infarction.