Does correcting for actual myocardial density improve the estimation of left ventricular mass by echocardiography in dogs after myocardial infarction?
Myocardial density changes during postinfarction healing, especially after reperfusion, and correcting for these changes provides more accurate echocardiographic estimates of left ventricular mass.
To determine whether changes in density (rho) of infarct and noninfarct zones during healing and remodeling after myocardial infarction influence estimates of left ventricular mass and detection of temporal changes by imaging, we measured weights (g) and volumes (mL) of infarct, noninfarct, and mixed tissue in hearts removed 1 to 42 days after anterior infarction in three groups of dogs: nonreperfused infarction treated with placebo or captopril, or infarcts reperfused after 2 h. In vivo mass was calculated from in vivo diastolic myocardial volumes (echocardiograms) and an assumed density of 1.05 g/mL or actual values derived from tissue weights and volumes. Over the 42 days, actual density deviated more from the assumed value of 1.05 in infarct than noninfarct zones, and the overall density was higher for reperfused than nonreperfused ventricles (1.09 vs. 1.06 g/mL, p < 0.01). Correction for density improved the correlation between absolute in vivo and postmortem mass slightly but not the detection of relative changes in mass in control, captopril, or reperfusion groups. These findings suggest that (i) densities of infarct and noninfarct zones differ and change during healing, especially after reperfusion, and (ii) correction for density provides more accurate estimates of volume-derived mass in reperfused hearts.
Ford et al. (Wed,) studied this question.