[Temporary emergency cardiac pacing under continuous echocardiographic control. Feasibility and safety of the procedure without using fluoroscopy].

Background: Cardiac pacing often turns out to be the only effective treatment of severe brady-arrhythmias. Several invasive and noninvasive temporary pacing procedures are known, whose application is sometimes difficult or time-consuming. An alternative temporary cardiac pacing procedure is described in this article, which is based on echocardiographic control.

Early dobutamine echocardiography for the assessment of coronary stenosis after first Q-wave myocardial infarction.

We assessed the accuracy of early dobutamine stress echocardiography to detect infarct-related coronary artery and multivessel disease in patients with first Q wave myocardial infarction after withdrawal of cardioactive drugs. Dobutamine-atropine echocardiography was performed in 91 consecutive patients (mean age 59+/-6 years) 7+/-4 days after myocardial infarction. Dobutamine was infused at incremental doses of 5, 10, 20, 30 to 40 microg/kg/min each one dose for 3 min.

Potential influence of pre-infarction angina on myocardial viability and residual ischemia.

Background: The effects of recent pre-infarction angina on myocardial viability and residual ischemia are unknown. This study evaluates them in 90 patients with a first Q-wave myocardial infarction using early dobutamine stress echocardiography.

Methods: Patients were classified according to the absence or presence of recent pre-infarction angina, defined as chest pain lasting < 30 min during a period of 7 days before the acute myocardial infarction.

Significance of T-wave changes during early dobutamine stress echocardiography in patients with Q-wave acute myocardial infarction.

The relation between T-wave changes and regional contraction during dobutamine stress echocardiography at low (5 to 10 microg/kg/min) and high (20 to 40 microg/kg/min) doses in 43 consecutive patients, early (7+/-2 days) after first recent Q-wave acute myocardial infarction has been evaluated. T-wave changes detected in > or =2 infarct-related electrocardiographic leads during dobutamine infusion were defined as follow: (1) negative T waves becoming positive, (2) positive T waves becoming upright > or =2 mm, and (3) negative T waves becoming upright > or =2 mm from baseline. Wall motion score index (WMSI) was defined as the sum of the echocardiographic scores of 16 segments divided by total segments considered at baseline, and at low and peak doses of dobutamine.