EDITORIAL

Measuring left ventricular volume and ejection fraction with the biplane Simpson’s method

J E Otterstad

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Jan Erik Otterstad, Division of Cardiology, Central Hospital of Vestfold, N-3116 Toensberg, Norway;
j-otte@online.no

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Are there still problems with two dimensional echocardiographic measurements of left ventricular volume and ejection fraction with the biplane Simpson’s method?

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Keywords: echocardiography; left ventricular ejection fraction; acute myocardial infarction; biplane Simpson’s method

Abbreviations: AMI, acute myocardial infarction; CATS, captopril and thrombolysis study; CONSENSUS, cooperative North Scandinavian enalapril survival study; DEFIANT, doppler flow and echocardiography in functional cardiac insufficiency: assessment of nisoldipine therapy; LEVEREM, left ventricular remodelling; LVEF, left ventricular ejection fraction

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In this issue of Heart, Nijland and colleagues address the important question on how low dose dobutamine echocardiography at an early stage can predict later improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) after an acute myocardial infarction (AMI).¹ A 5% increase in LVEF was arbitrarily chosen to represent an improvement, and they found this to occur in 21 (20%) of 107 patients with AMI. If dobutamine echocardiography revealed myocardial viability in 2 segments, the prediction of an increase in LVEF had a sensitivity of 81% and a specificity of 65%. Other predictors for such an improvement were non-Q wave infarction and anterior infarction, but myocardial viability assessed with the stress echo method was the single best predictor of improvement in LVEF.

This study raises some important principal questions related to the echocardiographic methodology in assessing left ventricular volumes and ejection fraction. If the true prognostic value of stress echo . . . [Full text of this article]

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Darrel P Francis

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