Circulation Journal Official Journal of the Japanese Circulation Society http://www. j-circ.or.jp akotsubo cardiomyopathy (TC) is a cardiovascular event characterized by acute chest pain with ST-segment elevation and/or T-wave inversion, absence of substantial coronary arterial narrowing on angiography, and reversible systolic dysfunction with abnormal wall motion of the mid and distal left ventricle. 1-3 Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as a non-invasive imaging modality that permits assessment of myocardial infarction and edema, as well as left ventricular (LV) function. 4-6 In most of the previous studies that have evaluated MRI findings of TC, 7-12 the absence of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) was considered to be an important finding to differentiate TC from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients with acute chest pain. Recently, several reports indicated that TC may exhibit LGE in the acute phase. 13-16 In a recent multicenter study evaluating TC patients in Europe and the United States, LGE was detected in 9% of TC patients, by using a threshold of 3 standard deviations (SD) above the mean of remote normal myocardium to define the presence of LGE. 17 However, the signal intensity (SI) characteristics of LGE in TC were not well defined in comparison with AMI in those previous studies. In addition, limited data are currently available regarding the prevalence of LGE in TC patients in Japan. Accordingly, the purpose of our study was to determine the SI characteristics of LGE in patients with TC in comparison with AMI, and to evaluate the relationship between the presence of LGE and recovery of wall motion abnormality (WMA).
Editorial p 814 MethodsPatients With TC All examinations were approved by the institution's board of medical ethics and clinical investigation and all subjects gave written informed consent. We enrolled 28 consecutive patients