Yale Cardiovascular Medicine Grand Rounds: "Integration of Rubidium-82 Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Derived Regional Myocardial Blood Flow (MBF) Quantification in the Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease"
Cesia is originally from Honduras, where she graduated from medical school. She did internal medicine residency at the University of Miami and stayed on an additional year as a Chief Resident. During this time, her research was focused on appropriate use of cardiac imaging and she has coauthored several book chapters and papers on this topic. She is currently a fourth-year fellow pursuing an Advanced Multimodality Imaging fellowship as well as a candidate for the Masters in Health Science program. Clinically, Dr. Gallegos has spent the last two years developing expertise in the management of infiltrative cardiomyopathies. During her time at Yale, she has been being involved in a number of important clinical research and quality projects in the Yale nuclear cardiology laboratory. Her primary focus at this time includes work on the use of Rb-82 PET coronary flow reserve in particular in the evaluation of regional coronary artery perfusion defects in the correlation to angiographic stenoses under the mentorship of Dr. Edward Miller. As a result of her work, she was selected as one of 2019 “Ones to Watch” by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, awarded to the top 30 early career professionals in this area and one of American Society of Nuclear Cardiology Future Leaders of 2019.
Objectives:
- Describe the methodology for acquisition of regional myocardial blood flow using Rb-82 PET and its physiologic basis.
- Discuss the clinical value of global and regional myocardial blood flow measurements by Rb-82 PET in relation to coronary angiography findings.
- Propose possible approaches to study the impact of regional myocardial blood flow parameters in distinguishing obstructive coronary artery disease and microvascular disease.