Adenoscan Overview

How Adenoscan Helps You See

The clinical value of stress myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) for the evaluation of coronary artery disease (CAD) has been clearly established¹(see below). In patients unable to exercise adequately, pharmacologic stress with Adenoscan helps provide:

Important diagnostic, risk-stratification, and clinical decision-making information^2,3
3- to 4-fold increase in coronary blood flow over baseline⁴
Imaging results comparable to exercise^5,6
Interpretable results in 98.7% of patients⁷
Well-established safety profile

Adenoscan is the most widely used pharmacologic stress agent for MPI scintigraphy. More than 2 million MPI procedures using Adenoscan were performed in 2007 in patients unable to exercise adequately.⁸

Adenoscan is the ONLY adenosine formulation approved for use in MPI—using other adenosine products for stress in MPI is a violation of the method-of-use patents that protect Adenoscan.

A Look at the Clinical Value of MPI
Clearly, MPI can shed some light on the evaluation and treatment of CAD, providing incremental information for patient management decisions.^2,9,10

Click on the illustration to see how.

A Special Challenge: Illuminating Cardiac Risk in Diabetic Patients
Heart disease mortality rates are 2- to 4-times higher in diabetics than in nondiabetics.¹³ Further complicating the picture, diabetics appear to be at increased risk for asymptomatic myocardial ischemia and unrecognized myocardial infarction.^14,15 In fact, diabetic patients who have no history of MI face a risk of MI matching that in nondiabetic patients who had a previous MI.¹⁶

MPI has been shown to provide important risk stratification information to help guide management decisions in diabetic patients.^17,18

Click on the illustration to see where MPI fits in.

More than meets the eye: Read about other patient populations at increased risk of CAD.
Learn more about the imaging efficacy of Adenoscan from the product monograph.
See Adenoscan in action in our online case studies.
Help your patients understand how myocardial perfusion imaging can be a useful diagnostic tool for heart disease. Visit the For Your Patients section.

References

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IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Intravenous Adenoscan^® (adenosine injection) is indicated as an adjunct to thallium-201 myocardial perfusion scintigraphy in patients unable to exercise adequately.

Adenoscan is contraindicated in patients with 2nd- or 3rd-degree AV block, sinus node disease, and known or suspected bronchoconstrictive or bronchospastic lung disease.

Approximately 2.6% and 0.8% of patients developed second- and third-degree AV block, respectively. All episodes of AV block have been asymptomatic, transient, and did not require intervention; less than 1% required termination of adenosine infusion.

Fatal cardiac arrest, sustained ventricular tachycardia (requiring resuscitation), and nonfatal myocardial infarction have been reported coincident with Adenoscan infusion. Patients with unstable angina may be at greater risk.

Side effects that were seen most often included flushing (44%), chest discomfort (40%), and dyspnea (28%). Side effects usually resolve quickly when infusion is terminated and generally do not interfere with test results.

Despite adenosine’s short half-life, 10.6% of the side effects started several hours after the infusion terminated, and 8.4% of the side effects that began during the infusion persisted for up to 24 hours after infusion. In many cases, it is not possible to know whether these late adverse events are the result of Adenoscan infusion.

Please see full prescribing information.