Abstract

ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Assessment of left ventricular function and volumes provides valuable information in patients with heart disease. It is also considered a prognostic marker in coronary artery disease. Two- dimensional transthoracic echocardiography is the most widely used method for Left Ventricular function assessment, but this modality is operator dependent and can be impaired by a poor acoustic window.
OBJECTIVE:
To validate a single tertiary center experience in Multi Detector Computed Tomography for the evaluation of cardiac function in patients undergoing coronary CT angiography.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
A cross sectional study, conducted at Ibn Albitar center from September 2012 till May 2013. Patients included are those who already underwent 64-slice CT coronary angiography to evaluate known or suspected coronary artery disease, CT coronary angiography is performed using a 64- slice Multi Detector CT-scanner. Transthoracic Echocardiography was done by a single operator served as the reference standard.
RESULTS:
Eighty patients (66.3% male) were included in the study, the mean age was 53.19 ± 10.6 years. The mean Left ventricular End Diastolic Volume by Cardiac CT and Echocardiography were 125.31 ± 41.92, 126.75 ± 41.894 ml respectively, with excellent correlation (r =0.912; P< 0.001). Average Left ventricular End Systolic Volume (LVESV) by Cardiac CT and Echocardiography were 58.08 ± 34.18, 53.74 ± 33.15 mL respectively^ With Excellent correlation coefficient (r = 0.971; P0.001), with trends towards CT showing slightly higher values than that of Echocardiography.
Average Left ventricular Ejection Fraction was 55.40 ± 14.57% as determined by Cardiac CT, compared to 59.26 ± 9.8% by Echocardiography, with good correlation between the two methods (r = 0.734; P=0.01), although LVEF was slightly underestimated by Cardiac CT (3.86 ± 9.9%; P0.001).
CONCLUSION:
The current study showed that (our experience in the) assessment of cardiac function by CT is comparable to the commonly used 2D Echocardiography method. And can be used in patients already performing coronary CT angiography, (potentially for those in whom the images from TTE are inadequate. ^w j.