Equilibrium radionuclide ventriculography: still a clinically useful method for the assessment of cardiac function?

Equilibrium radionuclide ventriculography: still a clinically useful method for the assessment of cardiac function? Hell J Nucl Med. 2018 Sep-Dec;21(3):213-220 Authors: Sachpekidis C, Sachpekidis V, Moralidis E, Arsos G Abstract 18 The non-invasive assessment of left ventricular function with simple indices, such as left ventricular volumes and ejection fraction (LVEF), offers significant diagnostic and prognostic implications in the entire spectrum of cardiac diseases. Equilibrium radionuclide ventriculography (RNV) is a well validated technique for this purpose. Based on the principle that the amount of radioactivity emitted by technetium-99m (99mTc)-pertechnate labeled erythrocytes in the cardiac chambers is proportional to the amount of bloodcontained, reproducible and accurate LVEF measurements can be obtained, with practically no geometric assumptions regarding heart shape. However, the development of other imaging techniques, mostly echocardiography and secondarily cardiac magnetic resonance has led to a decline in the use of RNV. This is due to easiness, cost and availability issues and also because competitive modalities can offer reliable anatomic and functional information and hence they can address a variety of clinical scenarios in one session. Nevertheless, RNV still remains a reliable method in clinical conditions, in which the detection of small changes in LVEF may be important in clinical decision-making, such as in ...
Source: Hellenic Journal of Nuclear Medicine - Category: Nuclear Medicine Tags: Hell J Nucl Med Source Type: research