Assessment Of Left Ventricular Function By Echocardiography In Patients With Coronary Artery Disease

Coronary artery disease has a high morbidity and mortality. In 1970's, M-mode echocardiography was used as a noninvasive diagnostic tool to assess the left ventricular (LV) function. The use of two-dimensional echocardiography can assess the LV function more accurately and much easier than that of M-mode. Although there were some articles concerning LV function using echocardiography, systematic study and comparable materials were rarely available. The purposes of this study were to establish different methods of echocardiography and compare the uses of them in assessing the LV function in coronary artery disease, to improve the value of echocardiography in clinical decision-making and predicting the results of treatment.1. The value of low-dose dobutamine stress echocardiography for the identification of hibernating myocardium in patients with chronic coronary artery disease(a prospective study)We studied 75 patients referred to coronary artery bypass surgery(CABG). All patients underwent LDDSE and 65 were examined postoperatively. Left ventricular wall motion was analyzed semi-quantitatively by dividing the left ventricle into 16 segments. Contractile reserve during LDDSE was defined as a decrease of one or more grades in asynergic segments. After CABG, myocardial viability was defined as a decrease of one or more grades in segments with contractile reserve compared with the corresponding preoperative resting images. Dyskinetic and aneurysmal segments changed to akinesis were not regarded as viable. Of 1040 segments, 104 were classified as hypokinetic, 173 as akinetic, 19 as dyskinetic and 28 as aneurysmal. During LDDSE, 82 hypokinetic and 51 akinetic segments had contractile reserve. Of these, 73 hypokinetic and 39 akinetic segments improved...