[Low-dose dobutamine stress test for the evaluation of cardiac function using ECG-gated SPECT scintigraphy with...

Although 201TlCl myocardial scintigraphy has so far been widely used for the evaluation of the viability of the myocardial infarcted area, functional evaluation using low dose dobutamine (DOB) loaded echography also became recently available. We performed 99mTc-mIBI gated SPECT on eight cases of myocardial infarction at rest and low dose (4-6 micrograms/kg/min) DOB-loading and related data were collected. Next, we calculated myocardial count increase rate (% WT = ES-ED/ED x 100) with left ventricular contraction from end-diastolic (ED) and end-systolic (ES) pictures in short-axial image, and made a comparative examination of regional contractilities at rest and DOB-loading. DOB-loaded echography performed on the same cases at the same dose revealed 15 segments as infarcted area (WM (+)) presenting improvement in wall movement at loading and 5 segments as infarcted area (WM (-)) presenting no such improvement, and %WT at rest and loading were 29.1 +/- 6.2 and 33.2 +/- 2.4 for (WM (-)) and 26.8 +/- 9.8 and 40.0 +/- 12.3 for (WM (+)), indicating a significant increase (p < 0.05) at loading. Contractility analysis using MIBI gated SPECT in combined use of DOB-loading was considered as a useful method of examination in view of its reflectability in the evaluation of the wall movement in DOB-loaded echography and of its high quantitativity.