Introduction: The present study aims to demonstrate the role of acute impairment of regional contractility, as assessed by 3D echocardiography, in predicting LV remodeling in post acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients.
Methods: We enrolled in the study a number of 48 subjects with AMI who underwent primary PCI followed by optimum medical therapy. In all these cases we followed the correlation between the amplitude of ventricular remodeling at 6 months postinfarction and regional contractility in the immediate postinfarction period, as assessed by 3D echo parameters at baseline: regional index of contraction amplitude (RICA) and the index of contraction amplitude (ICA). Positive remodeling (PR) was defined as an increase in LV end-diastolic global volume with >15% compared with baseline.
Results: Patients with positive remodeling (PR) presented at baseline a significantly lower ejection fraction (44.75% versus 49.95%, p = 0.009), associated with a higher end-systolic volume (80.34 ml vs. 70.63 ml, p = 0.02) and lower values for index of contraction amplitude — ICA (3.05 vs. 3.53, p = 0.01) and for regional index of contraction amplitude — RICA (1.38 vs. 2.78, p <0.0001), in comparison with the patients who did not experience ventricular remodeling. RICA achieved the best statistical significance for predicting the development of LV remodeling during the evolution of the disease. For RICA, the ROC curve using logistic analysis showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.88, highly significant (p = 0.0001).
Conclusions: Impairment of regional contractility is associated with development of LV remodeling to a more significant extent than the global impairment of ventricular contractility.
