American heart journal
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American heart journal · Feb 1983
Radionuclide analysis of pulmonary blood volume: the response to spontaneous angina pectoris and sublingual nitroglycerin in patients with coronary artery disease.
By manually assigning pulmonary regions of interest and deriving pulmonary time-activity (volume) curves, we were able to make count estimates of pulmonary blood volume (PBV) from gated cardiac blood pool scans. Five patients with coronary heart disease developed angina spontaneously while under a gamma camera. This produced an increase in cardiac volumes (p less than 0.05), a reduction in left ventricular ejection fraction (p less than 0.01), along with a marked increase in PBV (0.010 +/- 0.003 to 0.015 +/- 0.002 units, p less than 0.05). ⋯ In patients with stable chronic ischemic heart disease, sublingual nitroglycerin also reduced PBV (p less than 0.05), although not as much as when administered during an anginal episode. We conclude that gated imaging of the chest can be utilized to follow changes in PBV serially. These changes can be utilized to evaluate clinically important changes in hemodynamic status and the response to pharmacologic interventions.
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American heart journal · Aug 1982
Comparative StudyRelation of healed transmural myocardial infarct size to length of survival after acute myocardial infarction, age at death, and amount and extent of coronary arterial narrowing by atherosclerotic plaques: analysis of 70 necropsy patients.
The percent of left ventricular wall (including ventricular septum) replaced by scar was determined in 70 necropsy patients with a healed transmural myocardial infarct (MI). The MI involved from 1% to 55% (mean 13%) of the left ventricular wall. The ages at death of the patients ranged from 25 to 82 years (mean 62) and did not significantly correlate with MI size (r = -0.12). ⋯ When the 28 patients with an MI involving greater than 10% of the left ventricular wall were compared to those with an MI involving less than or equal to 10%, a similar overall percentage of 5 mm segments of coronary artery was severely narrowed (43% vs 42%). In addition, a similar percentage of segments was narrowed severely in each of the three major epicardial coronary arteries. Thus in our necropsy patients with a healed transmural MI, the MI size correlated with length of survival after an acute MI (in patients with definite histories of an acute MI) but not with age at death or with the amount, location, or extent of coronary arterial narrowing by atherosclerotic plaques.