With the advance of color-Doppler echocardiography, there has been many studies on the hemodynamics of the left ventricle. Doppler echocardiography, however, has many limitations, and the recently developed contrast echocardiography has overcome
those
limitations. The purpose of this study is to analyze of the blood flow hemodynamics of the left ventricle by transpulmonary contrast echocardiography. Subjects were fifteen healthy volunteers(group 1), fifteen patients of various heart
diseases(group
2), and thirteen patients with dilated cardiomyopathy(group 3). We used sonicated albumin, and a videodensitometer for the analysis of the base, midventricle and apex of the left ventricle.
Among the total 43 subjects, left ventricular opacifications were obtained in 28 subjects(65.1%). There were systolic decreases in group 1 (68.5±1.7%), and group 2(67.0±1.4%), and the systolic decrease correlated with the mean blood pressure
(r=0.46,
p<0.05), and ejection fraction (r=0.62, p<0.01) of the subjects, while it showed no correlation with the systolic blood pressure. There were three definitive diastolic filling patterns, type A; early diastolic peak and late diastolic peak, type
B;
only
early diastolic peak with a slow decrease, type C, three different peak times of base, midventricle and apex of left ventricle. The difference between the peak times of the base and midventricle and between the midventricle and apex of the left
ventricle of group 3(dilated cardiomyopathy) were 4.1±1.4, 4.7±1.8, different from those of group 1 and 2 significantly(p<0.001, respectively) According to the above results, contrast echocardiogrpahy with sonicated albumin is useful for the
analysis
of blood flow patterns of the left ventricle.
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