Along with CT, or computed tomography, researchers also looked at screening with echocardiography, ultrasound, and so-called myocardial perfusion imaging.

None of those tests are recommended for screening purposes by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federal task force. On the other hand, several medical societies, including the American Heart Association, support their use.

Dr. Allen Taylor, a cardiologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who wasn’t involved in the new work, said the findings didn’t mean the tests are no good.

“All you can conclude from that paper is we need some better evidence,” he told Reuters Health. “Innovation will stop if there is an irrational demand for evidence beyond refute.”

“It’s completely about the way information is identified by clinicians and put into practice,” he added. “The guidelines are not as clear and that’s a gap.”

Taylor, who said he has no ties to manufacturers of imaging equipment, explained the tests give a better idea of a patient’s risk than traditional risk factors like blood pressure and obesity.

But other experts disagree about their usefulness.

“You get more false information than you get real information,” Dr. Rita F. Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told Reuters Health last year.

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, online March 14, 2011.