Impedance cardiography (ICG) is a noninvasive method for evaluating cardiac function. Left ventricular stroke volume (SV) is the basic hemodynamic parameter derived from thoracic bioimpedance curves. Issues of our study were to investigate the diagnostic value of other indices of left ventricular systolic performance, such as ejection fraction (EF), index of contractility (IC), peak flow index (PFI), and acceleration index (ACI), which can also be calculated by ICG. Forty patients (PTS) with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) were monitored by automated ICG during pharmacologic stress testing with dobutamine. All PTS underwent subsequent cardiac catheterization. In PTS with single vessel disease, the dobutamine-induced changes of SV, EF, IC, PFI, and ACI were comparable to those of PTS without CAD. In PTS with multivessel disease, the impaired systolic performance during dobutamine stimulation could be clearly demonstrated. We conclude that automated ICG is a useful method for monitoring SV and other indices of left ventricular systolic performance for detecting PTS with ischemic left ventricular dysfunction during cardiovascular stress.

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