Jun 21 - PET scans revealed damage in the coronary arteries of chronic smokers in their 20s and early 30s. The research was presented at this year's Society of Nuclear Medicine Annual Meeting in Los Angeles and was summarized in a press release from the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

A positron emission tomography (PET) scan is a unique noninvasive imaging technique that can produce three- dimensional images of the living heart, brain or other organs at work. PET scans are often used in the diagnosis and management of cancers, certain brain disorders and heart disease. Cardiac PET scanning is generally similar to other types of non-invasive stress tests to help determine the presence and extent of CAD. It has two major advantages over the more common nuclear stress tests. First, the images are less likely to be distorted by parts of the patient's body (large breasts, obesity etc.), so abnormal results are more reliable. Second, it is an excellent tool for determining whether portions of the heart muscle are still viable (living and functioning). The scan can also measure how well those viable portions are functioning after a heart attack or other event in which there is a lack of oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle. PET scanning is not as readily available as more conventional nuclear imaging because of its greater cost and the need for a cyclotron device, which produces necessary isotopes on site.

Researchers at the Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine in Sapporo, Japan wanted to investigate whether PET scans would detect damage in the coronary arteries of young chronic smokers, though the smokers seemed healthy and were not experiencing any cardiac symptoms. To conduct the study, the researchers performed PET scans on a group of people aged 20 to 35. The scans of smokers were then compared with the scans of nonsmokers.

Results showed the chronic smokers' coronary arteries were less able to widen in response to a drug that normally widens arteries (a vasodilator). Previous studies had already established that cigarette smoking impairs the ability of blood vessels to widen, dramatically increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke, but this is one of several new studies that have found such damage in people who are so young.

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