Quantification of myocardial injury produced by temporary coronary artery occlusion and reflow with technetium-99m-pyrophosphate

Previously, technetium-99m-stannous pyrophosphate (/sup 99m/Tc-PPi) has been used to localize and estimate the size of myocardial infarcts in animals after permanent coronary artery occlusion. This study tested the hypothesis that /sup 99m/Tc-PPi accurately sizes myocardial infarctions produced by temporary coronary artery occlusion and reflow in dogs. Three groups of dogs were studied: group A underwent 3 hr of occlusion followed by 2 hr of reperfusion, with /sup 99m/Tc-PPi injected 10 min after reflow (n = 10); group B underwent 3 hr of occlusion followed by 2 hr of reperfusion, with /sup 99m/Tc-PPi injected 90 min after reflow (n = 11); and group C underwent 3 hr of occlusion followed by reflow with /sup 99m/Tc-PPi injected at 10 min and again at 48 hr after reflow (n = 5). Myocardial slices from group A and B dogs were imaged in vitro. Group C dogs were imaged with single photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT) in vivo, and myocardial slices were imaged in vitro at the conclusion of the study. The extent of myocardial infarction was defined with triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining, and coronary blood flow was estimated with radioactive microspheres. In addition, transmural myocardial tissue samples were taken from the center of the myocardial infarction, the lateral portion of the myocardial infarction, the normal myocardium adjacent to the lateral aspect of the infarcts, and from the normal myocardium and counted for /sup 99m/Tc-PPi activity. A significant correlation was found between infarct size determined by areas of increased /sup 99m/Tc-PPi uptake and that estimated from TTC staining for both group A (r = .89) and group B animals (r = .98)