Influence of myocardial infarction size on radionuclide and Doppler echocardiographic measurements of diastolic function.

To assess the relation between myocardial infarction size and diastolic function as measured by radionuclide ventriculography and Doppler echocardiography, 83 patients (aged 58 +/- 9 years) without significant valvular disease were studied 8 to 12 weeks after an acute myocardial infarction. Myocardial infarction size was measured by resting thallium-201 tomography. Peak early filling rate (in end-diastolic volumes/s) was measured by gated blood pool scintigraphy. Doppler measures of mitral inflow were peak early (E) and atrial (A) filling velocities, slopes of E and A, percent E and A filling, E/A ratio and diastolic filling period. In univariate analyses, there was a significant inverse correlation between infarction size and the peak early filling rate (r = -0.59, p less than 0.001), and this remained significant (r = -0.63, p less than 0.0001) in an analysis that included 2 other determinants of the filling rate, age and diastolic filling period. Infarction size was directly correlated to the peak E velocity (r = 0.37, p less than 0.01), deceleration of E (r = 0.41, p less than 0.01) and percent E filling (r = 0.31, p less than 0.01), and was inversely correlated to peak A (r = -0.27, p less than 0.05) and percent A filling (r = -0.26, p less than 0.05).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)