Gated blood pool scintigraphy as a tool for non-invasive measurements of left ventricular function.

Gated Blood Pool Scintigraphy (GBPS), i.e. the noninvasive evaluation of ventricular performance following the administration of radionuclides as intravascular tracers has had a major impact on many aspects of cardiology and has proven its clinical value and reliability in the past years. Today it is an accepted method in clinical practice, permitting the assessment of both global and regional cardiac function. The most important parameters derived from GBPS volume curves for the determination of left ventricular global function are ejection fraction (EF) at rest and under exercise and peak filling rate of the left ventricle at rest. In addition, GBPS permits the assessment of regional left ventricular function by determining regional EF and phase shifts. Echocardiography is no true alternative to GBPS due to frequent problems in quantitative evaluation and unpredictable errors in patients with non-uniform heart geometry or dyskinetic left ventricles. Thus, GBPS is not only useful in a wide variety of clinical settings, but has become an accepted tool in the methodological approach for non-invasive evaluation of new drugs and sequential drug therapy monitoring. This application of GBPS can be particularly recommended for the investigation of two different problems: a) exclusion of adverse drug effects on left ventricular performance in the process of drug safety evaluation, and b) demonstration of hemodynamic effects of new drugs particularly after long-term medication. GBPS provides valuable information as to the type, onset and duration of hemodynamic changes, permitting the determination of regional changes in myocardial function as well as its global evaluation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)