Ventricular function during the acute rejection of heterotopic transplanted heart: gated blood-pool studies.

Twenty patients who had undergone a heterotopic heart transplant were studied prospectively to determine the relationship between rejection and ventricular dysfunction assessed from gated blood-pool studies. A fully automated method for detecting ventricular edges was implemented; its success rate for the grafted left and right ventricles was 94% and 77%, respectively. The parameters, peak ejection and filling rates, were calculated pixel per pixel using a two-harmonic Fourier algorithm and then averaged over the ventricular region of interest. Peak filling and ejection rates were closely related with the severity of the rejection, while the left ventricular ejection fraction was not. Peak filling rates of both ventricles were the indices closely related to the presence of moderate rejection. Despite the low number of patients, these data suggested that gated blood-pool-derived indices of ventricular function are associated with ventricular dysfunction resulting from myocarditis rejection. Radionuclide ventriculography provides parametric data which are accurate and reliable for the diagnosis of rejection.