Low-Dose Dobutamine Electrocardiograph-Gated Myocardial SPECT for Identifying Viable Myocardium: Comparison with Dobutamine

The identification of severely dysfunctional but viable myocar-dium is of particular importance for the selection of patients with depressed left ventricular function who will benefit from coro-nary revascularization. Assessment of inotropic reserve with dobutamine has recently been used for this purpose. This study compared the accuracy of low-dose dobutamine stress gated myocardial SPECT (DS SPECT) with the accuracy of dobut-amine stress echocardiography (DSE) and resting perfusion SPECT for the identification of viable myocardium in patients with previous myocardial infarction. Methods: Resting and low-dose dobutamine (7.5 mg/kg/min) gated 99mTc-tetrofosmin SPECT and echocardiography and resting 18F-FDG PET were prospectively studied in 23 patients with previous myocardial infarction and severely depressed regional function. Twenty-one of them were successfully studied with each technique. Th