Assessment of left ventricular function by real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography compared with conventional noninvasive methods.
Quantitative assessment of left ventricular ejection fraction is an essential component of cardiac evaluation. We performed real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography in 56 consecutive patients who underwent multigated radionuclide angiography. Thirteen patients were excluded for the following reasons: 5 for large size of left ventricle required for image acquisition, 5 for suboptimal image quality in real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography, and 3 for atrial fibrillation. Finally, we compared left ventricular ejection fraction assessed by real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography and conventional 2-dimensional echocardiography with that obtained by multigated radionuclide angiography in 43 patients. Left ventricular ejection fraction was determined by real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography with the use of parallel plane-disks and sector plane-disks summation methods. A good correlation was obtained between both real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography methods and multigated radionuclide angiography (r = 0.87 and 0.90, standard error of estimate = 3.7% and 4.2%), whereas the relation between the 2-dimensional echocardiography method and radionuclide angiography demonstrated a significant departure from the line of identity (P <.001). In addition, interobserver variability was significantly lower (P <.05) for the real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography methods than that by the 2-dimensional echocardiography method. Real-time 3-dimensional echocardiography may be used for quantification of left ventricular function as an alternative to conventional methods in patients with adequate image quality.
Takuma
S
S
Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Ota
T
T
Muro
T
T
Hozumi
T
T
Sciacca
R
R
Di Tullio
M R
MR
Blood
D K
DK
Yoshikawa
J
J
Homma
S
S
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D017023:Coronary Angiography; D004452:Echocardiography; D019560:Echocardiography, Three-Dimensional; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D011875:Radionuclide Angiography; D018487:Ventricular Dysfunction, Left / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*