Alterations in left ventricular diastolic function in chronic ischemic heart failure. Assessment by radionuclide angiography.

Using radionuclide angiography at rest, we studied several parameters of left ventricular systolic and diastolic function in 60 patients divided into three groups, a control group (G1) of 15 patients and two groups of patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and previous anterior wall myocardial infarction but without aneurysm or dyskinetic wall motion, a second group (G2) of 23 patients with no history of heart failure, and a third group (G3) of 22 patients in New York Heart Association (NYHA) class II or III of heart failure. Ejection fraction, peak emptying, and peak filling rates, in addition to times to reach peak rates, were evaluated after constructing a global time-activity curve and its first time derivative. In addition, we computed the first time-derivative curves for each image pixel and obtained functional images (MIN/MAX images) representing the distribution of times to peak emptying or filling rates Using a left ventricular region of interest, time histograms were generated, and indexes of dispersion of times to peak rates, defined as the full width at half maximum of the histograms, were obtained. Significant (p less than or equal to 0.01) differences were observed among all groups for ejection fraction, peak emptying rate, and peak filling rate. The decrease of the peak filling rate still remained significant from group G1 to group G3 even after adjustment for differences in ejection fraction and heart rate. Peak filling rate was linearly correlated with ejection fraction in the population with ischemic heart disease (G2 + G3) (r = 0.68, p less than or equal to 0.0001).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)