Clinical application of cardiac computed tomography. Current recommendations

Cardiac computed tomography (CT) is suitable for use in patients with a low to intermediate pretest probability for risk stratification and for a clear exclusion of coronary heart disease. Furthermore, in addition to a purely anatomical depiction of coronary stenosis it enables the morphological assessment of the underlying plaques and a functional assessment of the hemodynamic relevance. The clinical value of cardiac CT is taken into account in the guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) on chronic coronary syndrome with a class 1 recommendation. Cardiac CT therefore has an essential gatekeeper function with respect to the indications for coronary interventions. In the field of structural heart diseases cardiac CT is a core element in the preprocedural planning of heart valve interventions and is the first choice procedure in the postinterventional assessment of unclear findings. Therefore, for interventional heart valve replacement CT-based planning is nowadays the established standard in the clinical diagnostics.