• Jens D Hove, Klaus F Kofoed, Hsiao M Wu, Søren Holm, Lars Friberg, Christian Meyer, Jan Aldershvile, Birger Hesse, and Henning Kelbaek.
• Cardiovascular PET Research Unit, Department of Cardiology, The Heart Center, Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. jhove@dadlnet.dk
• J Nucl Cardiol. 2003 Jan 1; 10 (1): 28-33.

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the possibility of measuring cardiac output during positron emission tomography (PET) examination of myocardial perfusion with nitrogen 13 ammonia.Methods And ResultsIn 7 patients undergoing right-sided cardiac catheterization for evaluation of heart failure and 6 patients who had undergone heart transplantation, a thermodilution catheter for continuous measurement of cardiac output was inserted. An N-13 ammonia scan of the heart was subsequently performed, and with use of factor analysis, the time-activity curve from the right ventricle was derived from the dynamic image sequence. The PET-derived cardiac output was subsequently obtained according to the Stewart-Hamilton principle as the amount of injected tracer divided by the area under the time-activity curve. PET-acquired cardiac output measurements correlated closely with the invasively determined values for a wide range of cardiac output values (P < .0001). The mean difference was 0.12 L/min, with an SD of 0.74 L/min. The interobserver variation was low, with a mean difference of 0.06 L/min and an SD of 0.46 L/min.ConclusionsCardiac output determination with N-13 ammonia and PET appears to be both accurate and precise and can be performed simultaneously with measurement of myocardial perfusion.

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