BACKGROUND The goal of this study was to examine a possible association between systemic microinflammation, as reflected by C-reactive protein (CRP) serum levels, and coronary vasomotion in patients with coronary risk factors but with angiographically normal coronary arteries. METHODS AND RESULTS Coronary vasomotor function was studied in response to cold pressor testing (CPT) in 71 patients ...

Background—We investigated the hemodynamic and coronary vasodilatory effects of CGS-21680, a potent selective adenosine A2A agonist, as well as its potential use as a new stress modality in combination with perfusion scintigraphy. Methods and Results—A stenosis of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) was produced in dogs to reduce the reactive hyperemic response to ,20%. Adenosine...

A double-blind study of the effect of three beta-adrenoceptor blocking drugs (beta-blockers) on exercise muscle blood flow (MBF) in 14 normotensive volunteers was carried out. MBF was measured by the xenon-133 clearance technique. MBF was not altered by placebo, sotalol or labetalol. Atenolol significantly reduced MBF compared with placebo, sotalol and labetalol. We conclude that sotalol and la...

Background Quantification of myocardial blood flow (MBF) on firstpass dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE ) MR perfusion imaging has been performed by several different methods. However MBF estimates are dependent on the analysis model used, as the absolute concentration of the contrast agent during first pass is not known. To improve the accuracy of the MBF estimates calibration is required. We pro...

Although a parametric image of myocardial blood flow (MBF) can be obtained from H2O PET using factor and cluster analysis, this approach is limited when factor analysis fails to extract each cardiac component. In this study, a linear least-squares (LLS) method for estimating MBF and generating a MBF parametric image was developed to overcome this limitation. The computer simulation was performe...

UNLABELLED Routine quantification of myocardial blood flow (MBF) requires robust and reproducible processing of dynamic image series. The goal of this study was to evaluate the reproducibility of 3 highly automated software programs commonly used for absolute MBF and flow reserve (stress/rest MBF) assessment with (82)Rb PET imaging. METHODS Dynamic rest and stress (82)Rb PET scans were select...

BACKGROUND Measuring the rate of clearance of carbon-11 labelled acetate from myocardium using positron emission tomography (PET) is an accepted technique for noninvasively assessing myocardial oxygen consumption. Initial myocardial uptake of [(11)C]acetate, however, is related to myocardial blood flow (MBF) and several tracer kinetic models for quantifying MBF using [(11)C]acetate have been pr...

Animal experiments have shown that the coronary circulation is pressure distensible, i.e., myocardial blood volume (MBV) increases with perfusion pressure. In humans, however, corresponding measurements are lacking so far. We sought to quantify parameters reflecting coronary distensibility such as MBV and coronary resistance (CR) during and after coronary angioplasty. Thirty patients with stabl...

AIMS We studied the effects of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) on global and regional myocardial oxygen consumption (MVO2) and myocardial blood flow (MBF) in non-ischaemic (NICM) and ischaemic dilated cardiomyopathy (ICM). METHODS AND RESULTS Thirty-one NICM and 11 ICM patients, all of them acute responders, were investigated. MVO2 and MBF were obtained by 11C-acetate PET before and a...