Assessment of left ventricular stiffness and compliance.

Invasive and non-invasive methods exist to assess left ventricular compliance (LVC). This work has two parts, one experimental and one clinical. We estimated left chamber stiffness in dogs by using volume data from radionuclide ventriculography (RNV) and left ventricular pressure data, synchronized with a gating system to the intraventricular dp/dt max to obtain volume and pressure data from a mean cardiac cycle.

[Role of isotope methods in the evaluation of cardiac function in intensive care].

Radioisotopic cardiac investigation techniques still have a limited role in intensive care units, mainly due to cumbersome traditional equipment, even if in some cases favourable local circumstances exist, such as the proximity of a nuclear medicine unit or the availability of a mobile gamma camera. Nevertheless, nuclear techniques show a number of interesting features, mainly related to the fact that measurements of cardiac chamber volumes and of their variations can be directly derived from activity counts, without any geometrical hypothesis as it is necessary for other methods such as contrast angiography or echocardiography. The whole cardiac cycle (its systolic part as well as its diastolic part) can therefore be evaluated.