Evaluation of left ventricular volume and wall motion by digital intravenous subtraction angiography

Fifty three patients were studied by digital intravenous subtraction angiography (DSA) and conventional left ventriculography (LVG). The measurements of left ventricular end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV), stroke volume (SV) and ejection fraction(EF) obtained by DSA were compared with values of conventional LVG in 21 patients. Single plane area length method of Sandler and Dodge was used to calculate left ventricular volume for both DSA and conventional LVG. DSA-LVG exhibited close correlation with conventional LVG for EDV (r = 0.94), ESV (r = 0.97), SV (r = 0.84) and EF (r = 0.97). Regional wall motion was compared by contraction movie of both methods in 11 patients with asynergy. DSA-LVG and conventional LVG were concordant in classification of asynergy in 54/55 (98 %). Then LV wall was divided into 12 segments to calculate regional %-shortening to evaluate ventricular contractivity quantitatively. Fifteen cases were studied preliminary to define the criteria of hypokinesis, akinesis and dyskinesis. After recombining the 12 segments into 5 segments to AHA, the contraction pattern of 17 cases with asynergy was evaluated and compared with that of cineangiography of conventional LVG. The concodant rate was 80 %. The reasons which induced discrepacy were discussed. It suggested that regional %-shortening may be used as a new parameter to evaluated the regional contractivity quantitatively. (author)