[Notes on the use of equilibrium radionuclide angiography in the study of diastolic ventricular function]

Diastolic ventricular heart failure, as an isolated pathologic process, recently assumed a great speculative interest and become a fashionable concept, although not so readily defined and understood. Gated blood pool radionuclide ventriculography allows the measure of parametric data which investigate the dynamics of ventricular filling volumetric changes. Radionuclide ventriculography presents peculiar characteristics of non geometric analysis with practically tridimensional approach to the study of ventricular imaging. The parametric data obtained are indicated to verify diastolic functional condition in many types of cardiovascular pathology, but present same practical limitations, due in part to the impossibility of a precise identification of the four fundamental components of diastole on time-activity curve. Keeping these limitations in mind, and also the incomplete definition of pathophysiological mechanism of diastolic derangement, nuclear cardiology still offers way of serially investigate diastolic function in many clinical settings. From a review of our preceding researches, the radio between maximal rates of diastolic and systolic ventricular volumetric changes (PFR/PER) is here considered. Purpose of this review is a deeper knowledge of radionuclide parameters which investigate the function and dynamics of ventricular filling.