Effect of enhanced external counterpulsation on dobutamine-induced left ventricular wall motion abnormalities in severe chronic angina pectoris.

We studied the effect of enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP) in 23 consecutive patients with stable angina pectoris who had a positive dobutamine stress echocardiogram. After EECP, stress-induced wall motion score (WMS) improved by > or =2 grades in 43% of the patients (n = 10); the average improvement was 5.3 +/- 3.8 compared with -0.6 +/- 3.0 in the remaining 13 patients (p = 0.007). The diastolic/systolic augmentation ratio increased by 217% in response to the full course of EECP (p = 0.0002) among patients with improved WMS, and by 71% (p = 0.004) among the other patients; the increase was greater among patients with improved WMS than among patients with no improvement (p = 0.01). After EECP, Canadian Cardiovascular Society angina class improved from 3.1 +/- 0.6 to 2.2 +/- 0.7 (p <0.0001) in the entire group and exercise capacity increased by 73 seconds (p = 0.0002) in patients who were able to exercise (n = 18).