[RI angiocardiography of idiopathic cardiomyopathy (author's transl)].

This study was aimed to evaluate the noninvasive method of radioisotopic angiocardiography for detecting a disproportionate thickning of the interventricular septum relative to the left ventricular free wall in the patient with idiopathic hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The experimental study was performed to compare the imaged size of myocardial wall obtained my filling up with technetium 99 m labeled sponge in biventricular cavities, with the actually measured thickness of the heart specimen. The resultant correlation between actual and imaged size of the left ventricular wall was excellent (r = 0.95). In the clinical application of this method, a gated cardiac blood pool scan was performed after the intravenous administration of technetium 99 m labeled human serum albumin in a dose of 10 mCi. The cardiac images were obtained in anterior, 30, 35, 40 and 45 degree left anterior oblique projection, and evaluated by visual inspection and semi-quantitatively by tracing the myocardial borders. As a result, the imaged asymmetric septal hypertrophy was evident in all four patients with PMD, with a ratio of septum to left ventricular free wall of 1.35 compared to 0.76 in five patients with left ventricular hypertrophy of known heart disease, and 0.88 in twenty-one miscellaneous cardiac patients without left ventricular hypertrophy. Thus, RI angiocardiography provides a safe, repeatable method for detection and evaluation of Primary Myocardial Disease.