title: Measurement of right ventricular ejection fraction by contrast echocardiography.
abstract: We evaluated 20 healthy subjects with no cardiac disease (8 males, 12 females, age 49+/-12) to determine the accuracy of right ventricular ejection fraction measurement with contrast echocardiography performed with D-galactose (Echovist 300). All patients underwent two dimensional echocardiography where the right ventricular ejection fraction was calculated by the Simpson's rule first without contrast, then after the injection of 5 ml D-galactose in the same position and compared to the right ventricular ejection fraction measured by the first pass radionuclide angiography on the same day. Subjects had a normal left ventricular ejection fraction of 66+/-5 and a body mass index of 28.9+/-1.2. The correlation between echocardiographic and radionuclide derived right ventricular ejection fraction significantly increased when contrast was used (r=0.81 vs. r=0.6). The r value for interobserver variability also increased significantly with contrast use (r=0.98 vs. r=0.7). We conclude that D-galactose contrast injection significantly enhances border detection and improves the accuracy of right ventricular ejection fraction calculations with echocardiography making it a simple and reliable method.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: S L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Tokgözoglu
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Caner
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kabakçi
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kes
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003287:Contrast Media; D004452:Echocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005690:Galactose; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011875:Radionuclide Angiography; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013318:Stroke Volume; D016278:Ventricular Function, Right / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media; D005690:Galactose