Stress Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging Provides Effective Cardiac Risk Reclassification in Patients With Known or Suspected Stable Coronary Artery Disease

Abstract

Background

A recent large-scale clinical trial found that an initial invasive strategy does not improve cardiac outcomes beyond optimized medical therapy in patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD). Novel methods to stratify at-risk patients may refine therapeutic decisions to improve outcomes.

Methods and Results

In a cohort of 815 consecutive patients referred for evaluation of myocardial ischemia, we determined the net reclassification improvement of the risk of cardiac death or nonfatal MI (MACE) incremental to clinical risk models, using guideline–based low (<1%), moderate (1–3%), and high (>3%) annual risk categories. In the whole cohort, inducible ischemia demonstrated strong association with MACE (hazard ratio 14.66, P<0.0001) with low negative event rates of MACE and cardiac death (0.6% and 0.4%). This prognostic robustness maintained in patients with prior CAD (hazard ratio 8.17, P<0.0001, and 1.3% and 0.6%, respectively). Adding inducible ischemia to the multivariable clinical risk model (age and prior CAD adjusted) improved discrimination of MACE (C-statistic 0.81 to 0.86, P=0.04; Adjusted hazard ratio 7.37, P<0.0001) and reclassified 91.5% of patients at moderate pre-test risk (65.7% to low risk; 25.8% to high risk) with corresponding changes in the observed event rates (0.3%/year and 4.9%/year, for low and high risk post-test, respectively). Categorical net reclassification index was 0.229 (95% CI 0.063–0.391). Continuous NRI was 1.11 (95% CI 0.81–1.39).

Conclusions

Stress CMR effectively reclassifies patient risk beyond standard clinical variables, specifically in patients at moderate to high pre-test clinical risk and in patients with prior CAD.