Left ventricular volumes in the recovery phase after myocardial infarction: relation to infarct location, left ventricular function and one-year cardiac mortality.

Absolute left ventricular volumes, normalized to body surface area, were determined by a count-based radionuclide technique in 189 patients with myocardial infarction (MI). All examinations were performed in the second week after MI. Fifty-three percent of the patients had an increased end-diastolic volume index (EDVI) and 72% an increased end-systolic volume index (ESVI). Patients with anterior MI had the same median EDVI as patients with inferoposterior MI, but significantly higher median ESVI and significantly lower median stroke volume index (SVI). SVI was subnormal in 19% of the 189 patients and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was subnormal in 67%. A non-linear, inverse relationship was present between EDVI and LVEF and between ESVI and LVEF, but LVEF varied greatly for any degree of ventricular dilatation. During a 1-year follow-up period, death from cardiac causes occurred in 29 patients. A strong relationship was present between the degree of ventricular dilatation and 1-year mortality, as well as between the degree of SVI or LVEF reduction and 1-year mortality but, next to clinical heart failure, LVEF was the single most powerful predictor of cardiac death, and various combinations of EDVI, ESVI and SVI did not add more prognostic information to that obtained by heart failure than did LVEF.