CONSENSUS STATEMENT A Report of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology Task Force on Women and Heart Disease (Writing Group on Perfusion Imaging in Women) WRITING GROUP

(ASNC), founded in 1993, is a professional medical society whose mission is to foster optimal delivery of nuclear cardiology services through professional educa-tion and leadership in the establishment of standards and guidelines for the practice of nuclear cardiology. ASNC will from time to time publish position, policy, or consensus statements that reflect a body of knowledge and clinical evidence for an application of radionuclide imaging techniques in the clinical care of patients with known or suspected heart disease. Position, policy, or consensus statements are approved by the ASNC Board of Directors before publication. This consensus statement will examine the role of myocardial perfusion imaging studies in the diagnosis, risk assessment, and treatment of women with known or suspected coronary artery disease. BACKGROUND Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women in the United States. Despite advances in its diagnosis and management, coronary artery disease continues to claim the lives of more than 230,000 American women each year.1 The lifetime risk of car-diovascular disease and its ensuing complications is 25% for a 40-year-old woman but increases to nearly 50 % for older women.2 Before the last decade, under-representa-tion of women in clinical trials and observational studies led to a lack of available evidence and a generalized misperception that coronary artery disease was a “man’s disease.”3-11 As a result of the paucity of clinical evi-dence on diagnosis and treatment of coronary arter