Abstract

OBJECTIVES: We sought to determine the feasibility of cardiac computed tomography (CT) to detect significant differences in the extent of left ventricular dyssynchrony in heart failure (HF) patients with wide QRS, HF patients with narrow QRS, and age-matched controls.
BACKGROUND: The degree of mechanical dyssynchrony has been suggested as a predictor of response to cardiac resynchronization therapy. There have been no published reports of dyssynchrony assessment with the use of CT.
METHODS: Thirty-eight subjects underwent electrocardiogram-gated contrast-enhanced 64-slice multidetector CT. The left ventricular endocardial and epicardial boundaries were delineated from short-axis images reconstructed at 10% phase increments of the cardiac cycle. Global and segmental CT dyssynchrony metrics that used changes in wall thickness, wall motion, and volume over time were assessed for reproducibility. We defined a global metric using changes in wall thickness as the dyssynchrony index (DI).
RESULTS: The DI was the most reproducible metric (interobserver and intraobserver intraclass correlation coefficients >/=0.94, p CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative assessment of global CT-derived DI, based on changes in wall thickness over time, is highly reproducible and renders significant differences between subjects most likely to have dyssynchrony and age-matched control subjects.