Left ventricular after load as a result of levocardiography with contrast media of various osmolality.

Contrast media have been successfully used as a diagnostic aid in radiology for decades. It has, however, been necessary to accept certain, in some cases unexplained, undesirable side effects because of their physicochemical properties. The conventional preparations available have for more than 40 years been iodinated salts or acids, whose major disadvantage has been high osmolality. For some years now, a new generation of contrast media has been available. These contrast media exhibit a far lower osmolality due to the lack of ionicity. As a result of the volume load of the left ventricle by levocardiography, there is usually an increase of the left ventricular end-diastolic pressure in the pathologic range over 12 mmHg. We were able to prove this in 120 consecutive patients whom we examined. The pressure increase with the use of nonionic contrast media was considerably lower. The differentiated observation of various risk groups showed no signs of valid predictive parameters.