[Functional scintigraphic blood pool study. A radiologic technic for non-invasive study of pharmacologically induced...

After in-vivo labeling of red blood cells with 99mTcO4, the radioactivity of different parts of the body is proportional to the regional blood volume. This technique allows the simultaneous registration of drug-induced changes of the local blood volume. We examined the influence of nitroglycerin on the blood volume distribution in patients with coronary artery disease (n = 10) and chronic heart failure (n = 8). Compared with the controls (n = 8) we observed in the nitroglycerin-groups a significant decrease of blood volume over the heart and the liver, whereas there was an increase of the blood volume over the extremities. It is pointed out that functional whole-body scanning is a useful radiological technique for the non-invasive study of pharmacologically caused changes of the local blood volume in man.