The direct manipulation of coronary blood flow to induce regional myocardial ischemia has been almost entirely limited to experimental animal models. Thus, the detection of ischemia-induced left ventricular dysfunction in human subjects has been generally limited to observations made under conditions of diagnostic loading or during spontaneous clinical events. Percutaneous coronary angioplasty requires repeated interruptions of coronary blood flow for periods as long as 1 minute. The resulting appearance of or increase in ischemia-produced changes in myocardial function were detected by two-dimensional echocardiography in 18 patients undergoing angioplasty of 22 coronary stenoses. Accordingly, left ventricular contraction was studied during 52 episodes of regional coronary blood flow interruption and reperfusion in the process of inflating and deflating the angioplasty balloon. Before angioplasty, left ventricular wall motion was normal in 14 patients. There was mild anteroapical hypokinesia in two patients, anteroapical akinesia in one and mild inferior hypokinesia in one. Balloon inflations repeatedly produced new or increased wall motion abnormalities in the distribution of the instrumented coronary artery in 19 (86.4%) of the 22 procedures, but did not alter wall motion during angioplasty of one left circumflex artery lesion, one highly collateralized left anterior descending artery stenosis and one left anterior descending stenosis that had already caused severe anteroapical dyssynergy. Hypokinesia, usually rapidly progressing to dyskinesia, began 19 +/- 8 seconds (mean +/- SD) after coronary occlusion. Wall motion began to normalize 17 +/- 8 seconds after reperfusion.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Although cardiopulmonary bypass support has been increasingly used for high risk coronary angioplasty, few data exist regarding its effects on left ventricular function. Accordingly, in 20 patients changes in left ventricular size, afterload and myocardial function were assessed by continuous hemodynamic monitoring and simultaneous two-dimensional echocardiography during cardiopulmonary bypass-supported high risk angioplasty. The cross-sectional left ventricular area during bypass support remained unchanged during diastole, whereas during systole it decreased (from 29.6 +/- 11.4 to 27.6 +/- 10.4 cm2, p less than 0.05). Global left ventricular function expressed as fractional area change remained unchanged from baseline to bypass support but decreased during balloon inflation (from 0.27 +/- 0.11 to 0.17 +/- 0.09, p less than 0.001). The end-systolic meridional wall stress decreased during bypass support (from 141 +/- 75 to 110 +/- 58 x 10(3) dynes/cm2, p less than 0.02). Regional myocardial function was assessed by a wall motion score (0 = normal, 1 = hypokinesia, 2 = akinesia and 3 = dyskinesia). Regions supplied by a stenotic (greater than or equal to 50% diameter) vessel deteriorated during bypass support (score from 0.9 +/- 0.8 to 1.06 +/- 0.8, p less than 0.01), whereas regions supplied by a nonstenotic vessel did not. Regions supplied by the target vessel deteriorated further during balloon inflation (score from 0.7 +/- 0.6 to 1.7 +/- 0.75, p less than 0.001). Thus, although left ventricular size and global function remain unchanged and afterload decreases during bypass support, myocardial dysfunction in regions supplied by a stenotic vessel may occur. Furthermore, regional and global left ventricular dysfunction still occur with angioplasty balloon inflation during cardiopulmonary bypass support.

M-mode echocardiographic studies of endurance-trained athletes have provided conflicting data for right ventricular (RV) dimensions and no data for right atrial (RA) size. Since two-dimensional echocardiography provides a more accurate measurement of the RV and RA, it was employed together with M-mode echocardiography to evaluate 12 male endurance athletes and 12 sedentary controls matched for body size and age. All subjects were screened by history, physical examination, ECG, and maximal exercise testing. RV and RA areas were planimetered in the apical four-chamber view while displaying maximal chamber sizes. Athletes had significantly greater left ventricular (LV) wall thickness (P less than 0.01), LV area (P less than 0.001), and left atrial (LA) area (P less than 0.01). They also had greater RV area (P less than 0.01), RV wall thickness (P less than or equal to 0.05), and RA area (P less than or equal to 0.01). Maintained proportionality of the cardiac chamber dimensions in the athletes was shown by similar ratios of right-to-left ventricular areas, right-to-left atrial areas, and right-to-left ventricular wall thicknesses in both groups. The symmetry of the greater athlete's heart differs from most pathological conditions which have heterogeneous effects on specific cardiac chambers.

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