Value of Doppler index combining systolic and diastolic myocardial performance in predicting cardiopulmonary exercise capacity in patients with congestive heart failure: effects of dobutamine.

Study Objective: Doppler-derived myocardial performance index (MPI), a measure of combined systolic and diastolic myocardial performance, was assessed at rest and after low-dose dobutamine administration in patients with idiopathic or ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy. MPI also was correlated with other conventional echocardiographic indexes of left ventricular (LV) function, and its ability to assess cardiopulmonary exercise capacity in those patients was investigated.

Settings: A tertiary-care, university heart failure clinic.