In patients with distorted left ventricles unselected for image quality, tissue harmonic imaging improves accuracy and reproducibility of both visual and quantitative echocardiographic assessment of left ventricular ejection fraction. In particular, it promotes automated quantitation by reducing its high standard error into a clinically reasonable range.
The ability of preoperative M-mode echocardiography to predict the clinical course and the decrease in left ventricular size was assessed in 42 patients after uncomplicated valve replacement for isolated aortic insufficiency. During follow-up study, one patient died of chronic heart failure. The New York Heart Association functional class of the 41 survivors improved from 2.4 to 1.2. All patients had a preoperative M-mode echocardiogram. Serial echocardiographic measurements, available in 33 patients, showed a sustained decrease in left ventricular end-diastolic dimension after the first postoperative year from 73 +/- 8 to 57 +/- 9 mm at 6 to 12 months and to 53 +/- 9 mm at 3 years postoperatively (p less than 0.01). Left ventricular cross-sectional area decreased from 31 +/- 8 to 26 +/- 7 cm2 and then to 23 +/- 5 cm2 at the latest follow-up study (p less than 0.01). At 3 years postoperatively, M-mode echocardiograms were available in 37 patients: 24 had a normal left ventricular dimension (group 1), while 13 still had an enlarged left ventricle (group 2). The clinical course in these two groups was similar. The best preoperative predictor of persistent left ventricular enlargement was the end-diastolic dimension (p less than 0.05), whereas fractional shortening and the end-diastolic radius/thickness ratio were not predictive.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
The extent to which patients with low peak serum creatine kinase (CK) at their first myocardial infarction differ from patients with high CK levels in terms of risk for subsequent ischaemic events was investigated in 266 patients who survived the first 48 h from the onset of infarction. All patients were followed up for one year. Four groups were formed based on peak CK less than or equal to 200, 201-400, 401-800 and greater than 800 IU l-1. During follow-up the incidence of mortality was 15% (N = 39), non-fatal re-infarction 9% (N = 23), and angina 53% (N = 140). Hospital mortality was significantly higher (P less than 0.02) in the highest CK-group (16%), but the incidence of non-fatal re-infarction, angina pectoris and late mortality was similar in the four groups. In hospital survivors, ischaemic ST-changes during pre-discharge symptom limited bicycle stress test and multiple vessel disease were equally distributed in all four groups. We conclude that while hospital mortality is directly related to peak CK, there is no relationship between peak CK and late mortality, non-fatal re-infarctions, or recurrent angina. Accordingly, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in the individual patients are not influenced by the amount of serum CK released during acute infarction.
A dipyridamole-echocardiographic test (DET) was carried out to find out how safe and useful it was in predicting clinical outcome and in identifying patients at risk. The test was performed in 107 asymptomatic patients early (5 to 8 days) after a first acute uncomplicated myocardial infarction managed with thrombolytic therapy. All patients were followed up for a mean of 15 months and 94 underwent coronary angiography. The test was considered positive if transient asynergy of contraction was newly detected either in the infarct and adjacent areas or in the remote zones; two subsets were studied, according to the dose of dipyridamole (0.56 or 0.84 mg.kg-1) needed to induce ischaemia. The test was accomplished satisfactorily in 96% of patients. Intra-inter-observer agreements were 88% and 91% respectively. The test also proved safe at the high infusion dose. During the follow-up period, two patients died, one experienced re-infarction and 12 (12%) developed recurrence of angina. DET was abnormal in 32 patients (adjacent and remote asynergy in 28 and four patients respectively): 18 had a critical and two a non-critical stenosis in the infarct-related vessel, and nine had an occluded artery with collateral distal flow. Multivessel disease was present in 11 patients considered positive, four in the remote and seven in the adjacent zones. However, 20 patients with negative DET results had multivessel disease. Of the positive DET patients, seven had angina. There were eight total events in the 71 negative DET patients, five of whom had multivessel disease. Abnormality was more pronounced in positive DET patients, but did not influence the outcome.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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