Department of Nuclear Medicine, Technical University, Munich, Germany.
Curr Cardiol Rep. 2013 Mar;15(3):337. doi: 10.1007/s11886-012-0337-z.
Heart failure is a serious condition with poor prognosis, which imposes an ever increasing burden on healthcare systems due to its rising prevalence. Nonetheless, physiological processes underlying heart failure remain poorly understood. In recent years, functional imaging such as gated CT has become available for routine clinical cardiology investigations. However, a maturation of nuclear imaging techniques such as PET and SPECT is now yielding new insights into the pathophysiological changes underlying heart failure, based on non-invasive measurements of myocardial blood flow, myocardial viability, sympathetic innervation, neoangiogenesis and matrix metalloproteinases activity. Investigations of these biomarkers have the potential to reveal early aspects of left ventricle remodeling; diagnosis at an earlier stage of heart failure promises to facilitate improved intervention and therapy guidance. Furthermore, nuclear imaging techniques are being developed to monitor and predict outcome of novel cell-based approaches for restorative therapy of heart failure.
心力衰竭是一种预后较差的严重疾病，由于其发病率不断上升，给医疗系统带来了越来越大的负担。然而，心力衰竭的生理过程仍未被充分理解。近年来，门控 CT 等功能成像技术已可用于常规临床心脏病学研究。然而，基于心肌血流、心肌活力、交感神经支配、新生血管形成和基质金属蛋白酶活性的无创测量，正电子发射断层扫描和单光子发射计算机断层扫描等核成像技术的成熟，为心力衰竭的病理生理变化提供了新的认识。这些生物标志物的研究有可能揭示左心室重构的早期方面；心力衰竭的早期诊断有望促进改善干预和治疗指导。此外，还在开发核成像技术来监测和预测新型基于细胞的心力衰竭修复治疗方法的结果。
