Abu Dhabi: Hospital introduces innovative test for unusual, recurring chest pain

Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi is offering a pioneering test to patients who have been suffering for years from unexplained chest illnesses. This condition can affect people even if their coronary arteries show no significant blockages on a standard angiogram.

The hospital, a Mubadala Health partner, has introduced a comprehensive invasive microvascular and coronary spasm programme testing – a groundbreaking technology. The test evaluates for a cardiac disorder that causes angina, i.e., chest pain caused by poor blood flow to the heart. In this condition, arteries that supply blood to the heart either spasm down or fail to dilate adequately, which can go undetected in routine cardiac tests.

“While the conversation about this condition is not new in the field of cardiology, it is becoming more widely discussed and investigated, and therefore we’re finding that this is not a rare condition as once thought. From what we’ve seen across the Cleveland Clinic network, it’s estimated that a significant number of patients who have angina may have some degree of microvascular disease or spasm,” said Dr Ronney Shantouf, staff physician, cardiovascular medicine in the Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.

The highly sophisticated testing method calls for specialised interventional cardiologists along with specialised equipment that can screen for abnormalities not only in the large coronary arteries but also the extremely minute arteries that are undetectable to the human eye. Without sophisticated testing, this condition will not be detected by the standard coronary artery angiogram and such patients end up suffering from recurrent chest pain that is incorrectly attributed to conditions such as stress and anxiety.

“It is often missed or undiagnosed due to the nature of its symptoms and needs a specialised cardiologist and advanced technology to be identify these. In the past people may have been told it was a mental or ‘phantom’ illness and to visit a psychiatrist to understand the cause for unexplained chest pain, only to discover after specialised testing that they have this condition,” Dr Shantouf noted.

The prevalence of this condition appears to be higher in women. Those who smoke, have diabetes or hypertension, are also more likely to have microvascular angina and/or coronary spasm, which predisposes them to a higher risk of having a cardiac event.

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