Measurement of right ventricular ejection fraction by contrast echocardiography

We evaluated 20 healthy subjects with no cardiac disease (8 males, 12 females, age 49+/-12) to determine the accuracy of right ventricular ejection fraction measurement with contrast echocardiography performed with D-galactose (Echovist 300). All patients underwent two dimensional echocardiography where the right ventricular ejection fraction was calculated by the Simpson's rule first without contrast, then after the injection of 5 ml D-galactose in the same position and compared to the right ventricular ejection fraction measured by the first pass radionuclide angiography on the same day. Subjects had a normal left ventricular ejection fraction of 66+/-5 and a body mass index of 28.9+/-1.2. The correlation between echocardiographic and radionuclide derived right ventricular ejection fraction significantly increased when contrast was used (r=0.81 vs. r=0.6). The r value for interobserver variability also increased significantly with contrast use (r=0.98 vs. r=0.7). We conclude that D-galactose contrast injection significantly enhances border detection and improves the accuracy of right ventricular ejection fraction calculations with echocardiography making it a simple and reliable method.