Unlike previous clinical studies comparing multi-slice CT with diagnostic cardiac catheterization, GE Healthcare's multi-center trial will not only seek to clinically validate the use of CT for non-invasive diagnosis of CAD, but will also examine patient results and analyze changes in the cardiologist's decision-making process and patient management. The latter are important indicators for determining whether utilizing the LightSpeed VCT improves patient outcomes and treatment protocols.

Dr. Matthew Budoff, M.D, FACC, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harbor - UCLA, and the chair of the ACC CT working group, has written ACC-approved guidelines for appropriate utilization and patient selection for diagnostic CT procedures. An early adopter of cardiac CT technology, Dr. Budoff is also a member of the advisory panel that assisted GE in designing protocols for this major multi-center clinical trial.


"Cardiovascular disease is responsible for more than 2,600 deaths per day in the United States. It is extremely important to validate the efficacy of new cardiac imaging technologies such as multi-slice CT so that the industry, and in particular medical associations like the American College of Cardiology, will have the necessary data to recommend appropriate changes in CAD diagnosis and potentially in cardiac patient management," said Dr. Budoff.

According to Dr. James Min, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology at Weill Cornell Medical College & New York Presbyterian Hospitals, and one of the investigators in GE's cardiac CT multi-center clinical trial, "CT angiography is the most significant innovation in cardiology within the last 15 years and offers tremendous promise for increasing patient safety as a non-invasive diagnostic procedure, while at the same time identifying disease at an earlier stage when more treatment options are available."

"Based on my initial findings using the VCT, I strongly believe that cardiac CT angiography has the potential to dramatically change the way we practice clinical cardiology, at least in part by significantly reducing the number of patients who need to undergo an unnecessary invasive diagnostic catheterization procedure," said Dr. Min.

Dr. David Kandzari, John B Simpson Assistant Professor of Cardiology and Genomics at Duke University is also a key member of the advisory panel to GE for the design of this trial. According to Dr Kandzari, "Cardiac CT is changing clinical practice. We hope that this study will provide solid clinical evidence to change practice guidelines on the appropriate use of cardiac CT in patient management."

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