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 | Prevalence of hibernating myocardium in patients with severely impaired ischaemic left ventricles |
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Prevalence of hibernating myocardium in patients with severely impaired ischaemic left ventricles
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
EDITOR,
We read with interest the article by
Al-Mohammad and colleagues on the prevalence of hibernating myocardium
in patients with ischaemic left ventricular dysfunction.1
Although we agree with the authors that positron emission tomography
(PET) can provide very accurate information for the identification of
hibernating myocardium, general statements regarding PET as being the
"gold standard" for the diagnosis of viability might be misleading
in view of recently published data.2 In a particular
subset of patients (those with severe postischaemic left ventricular
dysfunction) PET is more accurate than other imaging techniques and,
because of its technical characteristics, it is able to provide
superior information on tissue viability. However, this requires the
adoption of steady-state and standardised study conditions such as
those achieved during hyperinsulinaemic euglycaemic clamp for an
accurate quantification of the uptake of 18F
fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) by the myocardium. In addition this method
does not require the simultaneous
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