Value of electrocardiography and echocardiography for diagnosing ventricular enlargement in dilated cardiomyopathy.

A comparison is made of the informative value of ECG voltage criteria, echocardiographic signs (90 cases) and autopsy findings (38 cases) for diagnosing heart enlargement in dilated cardiomyopathy. Besides enlargement of both ventricles there can also occur predominant enlargement of the left or right ventricle. Echocardiographic signs of the ventricular dimensions correlate closely with the ventricular mass established by separate weighing at autopsy. 65.5% of the patients presented one or several ECG voltage signs of myocardial hypertrophy. Comparison of the results of instrumental examination with autopsy findings showed that EchoCG and ECG have a sufficiently high informative value in assessing the degree of left ventricular enlargement; however, their sensitivity is smaller in enlargement of the right ventricle.